Marked
by NopeNotGonnaDoIt
Summary: Two years past the Battle of Crait Kylo Ren and Rey meet again in battle. He told Skywalker he would destroy her, and that is what he intends to do.
1. Chapter 1

Rey's breath crystallizes the air in front of her as she waits.

Snow falls quietly around her prone body. The parallels this planet has to the one where they last battled each other do not go unnoticed. Rey finds a poetry to it, the first place and the last place they will truly fight being such mirrors of each other. Her mind wanders back to the last time she saw him, and the face that she had forced out of her mind comes back to her. She shudders, but not from the cold.

In the two years since she has seen him, she has lived a full life. She has never regretted the decision she made in the throne room. She feels like she belongs, finally, somewhere. Like she belongs to Finn and Poe and Rose. She has been made to feel safe, under the watchful eyes of Leia and Chewie. The family she had so desperately expected on Jakku had found her, but it wasn't the family she was waiting for. It was something better.

With them, she feels, for the first time, complete.

She feels complete when she and Poe move deftly past each other in the cockpit of the _Falcon_ , arguing over who is the pilot or co-pilot, working off muscle memory to make the old metal purr when they occasionally face an odd outlier of the First Order. BB-8 and Chewie always sit in the back, dueling in their concerned beeps and growls, respectively. She feels complete when she feels Rose's weight next to her in her bunk, late at night when they should be sleeping, as they talk about their childhoods, slowly bringing the pain from hers to the surface where Rose smooths it out with kind words and soft jokes. They stifle laughter that brings them to tears, happy and sad, depending on the night. She feels complete when Finn sneaks her knowing smiles whenever the galaxy, and life, reveal how vast and complex they are, and she always feels better knowing that everything that is new to her, is also new to Finn.

She knows her place now, and it is protecting them, with whatever she can.

Which is why she now waits. Now draws him out. To give them time. They all have their skillset, and this is hers.

She centers herself in the memories of her friends as she tries to block out the deafening, all-encompassing sounds of X-Wings and TIE fighters swirling above, her vision of them obscured by the dense forest around her. She fills her lungs with the cold air until they burn at capacity and then slowly controls her exhale, and she imagines the Aurabesh lettering that appears in Luke's old Jedi books, spelling out "meditate" and "focus" in her mind.

The chaos around her tucks under her consciousness, hidden below the cover of the force she wields. She feels both planes so clearly, both the planet she stands on and the veins of the force which run through it all. She remembers how much doing this used to hurt, used to tear her apart, when she tapped into it for the first time. Now, it envelops her, the threads of it inextricably linked in her DNA.

It is only in these meditative links where she senses him, his presence hangs like the black afterimage seared into her retina by the sun on Jakku. He is never more than a muddled trace, blurry and dense. Often, he stays in her periphery, lingering unobtrusively, making it easy for her to pretend he is nothing but a shadow, and not the one symbol of impending doom for her and her loved ones.

But sometimes, the shadow weighs heavy. Too heavy. Sometimes he becomes a black hole that dips the force so heavily into him, bending it all around that she, and everything around her, slide into him. Panic has always snapped her back out of the strata of the force before she reached his epicenter, and her muscles would ache for days after these particular sessions, thick with unused adrenaline. She stays away from meditation after these particular incidents, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks, not wanting to intrude on his hysterics.

In the quiet now, she sees a black spot in the distance that is him, the only other being that can tap into this plane so fully. She knew he would come for her before them, which is why they are on the other side of the planet and she is here (with the exception of Poe, who was probably barrel rolling above her, hollering in the victory of a direct hit). At the thought of Poe, his force signature flares in a way it never has before, its edges turning red. This must be what it is like when they are in the same physical space, she can see more, they can hear more. She quiets her thoughts as the spot grows larger.

Suddenly, the spot's steady pace towards her picks up. She thinks about bracing for his imminent impact, but the force picks up like a gentle breeze, running softly through the tendrils of hair that frame her face, and she calms. As he gets closer, this familiar bond alters in another way, as he starts to become clearer. The lines of his cloak are what she notices first, emerging from his usual blur in crisp lines. She notices then his outfit has changed slightly from when she last saw him last. His robes now wear a thin trim of gold, which traces him all the way down throughout his cowl, a nod to Snoke, no doubt. She frowns at the thought that even with Snoke long dead, his presence still lingers in Kylo Ren. The static around him dissipates until finally, with her eyes still closed, he stands fully in front of her, within striking distance. She angles her sight in the force to look into his face, and in the same instant, opens her eyes on the physical plane, breaking her meditation. Their eyes lock as the sound of war rushes back in.

For a long time, neither of them move. Rey can feel his thoughts racing, too fast for her to pick up on any one. He senses her prickling at the edges of his consciousness and goes blank. They both present as impenetrable fortresses, doomed to face each other eternally.

This silent reverie is cut with the hissing of Kylo's saber.

"I told Skywalker I would destroy you, and I intend to keep my promise to that dead scum." Kylo shouts over the sound of his weapon.

His anger is palpable in the cold air between them, vibrating turbulently off the slow moving molecules.

Rey doesn't move, doesn't flinch at the mention of her dead teacher. She stares back at Kylo's dark eyes with her own hazel. He starts to pace, not willing to strike yet, but also not wanting to waste his adrenaline. Her eyes follow him, back and forth in the snow, waiting.

"What is your plan here, scavenger?" he stops and eyes her, "You have no weapon, you can't fight me with force of will alone."

Standing still, the force breeze picks up again, catching her hanging rags to reveal her hilt below. Kylo's eyes flash when the double-hilted saberstaff casing reveals itself close to Rey's hip. The silver of its casing almost glistens in the low light of the double moons that streams through the thick canopy above them. Rey notices and places her hands lightly on her weapon, more out of habit than threat.

"How?" Kylo stands stock still, his eyes darting between the saberstaff and Rey's face.

Rey stands resolute, unwilling to give him anything more than she has. Sadness for how uninformed he is and embarrassment for her younger self unintentionally bleed through her thoughts as she looks at Kylo's face again. An overwhelming pity overtakes her for that lost and lonely girl she was, grasping for anything real, who turned her back on Luke to try to save this man who sputtered in front of her. It had never been real, it was all a trick an old monster played on them.

"Stop!" His deep shout breaks her shame. Kylo's face contorts into something else, as if he had put his mask back on, but he still stands bare faced in front of her.

"I killed my master for you, and you, you scavenger, have the audacity to think that wasn't real?" His rage is too much, it hurts too much, but she doesn't break eye contact, she doesn't step back. She knows what he wants, but she doesn't say anything to his direct questioning.

His saber sputters, magnifying her silence, her defiance.

"I offered you EVERYTHING" a guttural howl pierces her.

At this, Rey flashes with the thoughts that plagued her mind since the _Supremacy_. Before she can stop herself, her calm voice breaks, juxtaposing the scream that just dissipated, "You used me to get the power you craved. All I was to you was a vessel by which to increase your influence. You offered me nothing."

His rage breaks at this, and he rushes towards her with more elegance than their first fight. He had been training.

But so had she. From behind her, she draws out her saberstaff. As he notices it, a hesitation registers in his step, but his stride is too full now, too close now to stop.

He has to commit fully, and as he rises his staff up above Rey, she waits until the last possible millisecond before hers ignites from both ends.

His eyes lock on her face and her teeth bare. He sees the purple glow hit her face and something in him catches.

 _Of course it's amethyst_ his mind bleats before taking his eyes off her to look at the blades. He stops completely when he realizes what is inches from his face.

From one end of the saber, the familiar blue of his grandfather's saber juts out, matched completely, beautifully even, by the deep red hue of the light on the other side.

He breathes out a disbelieving "Rey" before her two-toned saber collides with his, showering them both in sparks.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey pushes him back, and they circle one another, mirroring each other's movements precisely. Kylo can't take his eyes off the ruby beam which slices the air in front of him. Rey notices the hypnotic effect it is having on Kylo and swirls the saberstaff idly around her, lulling him in. With his attention elsewhere, she lunges in, and Kylo jolts back, deflecting her dual strikes instantly. She steps back and waits for him, her saberstaff humming out from her grasp in the exhilaration of meeting another actual saber for the first time.

After what seems like an eternity, he finally steps forward and brings his saber up to engage her fully, and they start their dance.

Whenever the blood red of her saber collides with his, which is rare, as she leads mostly with the blue, an excitement swells inside him, instantly deadened when he splinters back to the reality that this is not training, that he is not her master, and that they are actively trying to kill one another.

The spite of those facts swells in him, as he spits, "I am not going to ask you to yield, if it comes to it. I will strike you down."

"Good, I'm glad you won't have to hear me say no again." Rey's confidence swells with each deflected strike.

At her words, Kylo's attacks grow more frenzied and less choreographed. She ducks a swing and then has to instantly jump as he brings the blade under her legs. He advances on her deftly as she brings one side of her saber, then the other up to meet his beam. His saber bounces back and forth off her own, ricocheting from one to the other as she spins her blades.

He jumps up and over her, breaking the tempo of this ballet. She uses her saber as leverage to spin her entire body parallel to the ground to meet him behind her, but she miscalculates, and he swings his blade down on top of her, her own weapon only narrowly coming between her head and his beam.

The pressure he is wielding down on her becomes too much and her hands cannot slide any lower without the beam bisecting her face, so she collapses her legs beneath her until she is kneeling in front of him. He continues to press down, angling his hands at a steeper incline to compensate for her position beneath him. She remembers the impossible heat his saber emits this close, remembers the searing air between them on Starkiller base the last time they fought like this.

"You need to run. You won't win this" there was a desperation in his voice that was not there before. She tilts her chin up to meet his gaze, curious to see. She follows her scar up his face, it reflecting the purple of their combined sabers like a still river, and is met with the same begging eyes she had seen on the Supremacy years ago.

Feeling some sort of emotion cloud him, she takes her chance, and in a fell motion, sweeps one hand off the saber, using it to call a fallen branch towards his legs. He dips backwards as the branch hits him, breaking the tension just long enough for Rey to flourish up back into an offensive position.

She bends her elbow up, twirling the blades in front of her face, muddling the red and blue until they form a halo of amethyst around her, before settling the blade perpendicular to her body, ready to resume once Kylo's balance returned.

"How? You have no master, no training," his gaze stings her as his words come out like an accusation.

"You thought destroying me would be easy?" the words pant out of her as she catches her breath.

"Not for a second," his lips curl into what might be considered a smile on any other face before he resumes his assault.

This time, however, it is different. He trusts her to parry every blow, block every jab. They are back to their dance, and he almost seems to enjoy it. It reminds her of training, in a way, but not any training she and Finn have done together. Their movements are so fluid, his every move seems to bolster her next one. After a few minutes, anger at how natural this seems starts to froth in Rey's blood. She doesn't want it like this, she wants to fight him, wants to watch him crumble beneath her.

When she has had enough of this, she lunges for his neck, bracing her saber to him, but at that moment he rises his for an aerial attack. His emotions bristle at how close she gets to decapitating him. Anger rises in him and he presses down with real force. Their hands press against each other, the leather of his gloves cold against her skin. He ensures they stay touching by compressing the back of his hands into hers violently. His robes dislodge, sliding down his arms slightly and exposing his wrists to the cold air. Her hands slip down and the skin of her wrists flushes against the skin of his wrists, but she doesn't notice as she desperately tries to keep the strain on their blades. Kylo notices, starkly contrasting this touch to the first time they touched, palms outstretched and willing.

Again, they are locked together, the tension between them making it hard for either to move without betraying their position entirely. Hard grunts clear both their throats and sharp intakes of air reveal how much effort this is taking on both their parts. In the red-purple glow something small moves into Rey's peripheral vision behind Kylo. She tries to keep her eyes on him, but it is so demanding, so dense. She betrays her self-taught training and darts her eyes to it briefly before looking back at Ren. Her heart stops.

A child.

Kylo can't hear her, can't register her thoughts now through his blind confusion, rage, and heat. All he sees is her eyes widen and her grip loosen, jerking him slightly forward towards her. At this he smirks. She must be weakening.

He steps back at the same time she does, and swings his saber in the empty space between them.

He doesn't notice she isn't looking at him until the arch of his saber is too far gone.

His saber makes contact with her lower abdomen, slicing her worn brown cloth coverings, and then, the skin and muscle beneath it. His stomach constricts when he feels his blade meet the resistance of her flesh.

 _NO._ Something deep inside him screams as he falls to his knees, throwing the lightsaber far to his right.

Panic sets into all his bones. Their bond ignites again as he screams at her, _WHY?!_

She stumbles back, but her eyes don't close in pain or meet his, they stand stark wide and open looking past him at something in the near distance. She hadn't heard him.

Slowly, Ren turns in the direction of her gaze and sees it.

A tiny girl stands curiously swaying between two giant tree trunks, dressed in light grey robes. Her eyes dart between Rey and Ren, both silented in her presence.

His brain starts scanning for an explanation. There were no settlements on this planet, there couldn't be. It was inhospitable for anything but war.

And then he notices. She looks exactly like Rey, the little Rey he saw in the interrogation room as he took what he wanted from her head. The little Rey crying out against the harsh desert. The little Rey lying in the shadows of an AT-AT, willing her small body to survive just one more day.

It hits him: he had touched Rey just now. He had bore his hands into hers. This was a vision. He had seen her future in the hut on Ahch-To the last time they touched and this was her past, her ghost come to haunt them.

Before his theory can play fully out, he looks at the girl's eyes. His muscles seize in stupor. They weren't Rey's eyes. He sees his eyes peering back at him under the girl's two bushy dark brows. The only parts that aren't carbon copies of Rey.

The smell of her burnt flesh permeates the air and he remembers what he had done. He breaks away from the small girl. As he shifts his kneeling body to back to Rey, his eyes meet the sparse drops of blood on the snow below her, what had escaped before the heat cauterized her wound. Past the bright red drops, her saber lay dormant beside her. He was so afraid then, so afraid to look further. He had not felt fear since the last time he had seen Rey, as she closed the door to the Falcon on him on Crait. Here, like then, his fear was the same. That he would never see her again after this moment.

He willed his gaze forward and found her standing still, both her hands grasping her wound, pressing hard into her side. Her breath hitched and her face gnarled in torture.

She wants so badly to fall but she knows if she does it would be over. She knows Finn and Poe and Rose are somewhere on this planet counting on her not to give in.

Instinctively, he reaches out for her, not wanting her to be alone in her pain. As soon as she processes his movement through her searing misery, a fear in her that dwarfs any she had felt before, even the powerful fear of a child on Jakku realizing no one would ever come for her, surfaces. Every fiber of her being feels as if it were bursting, knowing what came with Kylo Ren's touches. Always the visions of what she realizes will now never, ever be. She never wants to feel him ever again. A blast of solid energy surges from her center outward, forcing Kylo violently back into the tree behind him, the tree where her now vanished vision had stood just seconds earlier.

His skull makes a hollow sound against the trunk, a sound skulls should not make. He slumps down in a pool of his own black robes, stunned, his pupils blown wide open in a concussion, staring straight at her.

Rey blinks, the shockwave temporarily easing her agony. Questions fall like a flurry in her head, wondering what had just happened, what had she just done, before a tiny voice inside of her says, "Run."

She isn't truly sure whose voice it is, but she obeys, as best she can, by turning and slowly limping towards the rendezvous spot. About ten paces out, she calls her lightsaber to her hand from the snow. Kylo's gaze, set clearly on Rey until this moment, slowly fades to black.

* * *

He blinks back into existence, not knowing if it had been a few minutes or hours. It was still dark, the fighters above had moved farther away, but were still engaged in battle. He sits up, searching. The steady sleeting snow had not filled the footprints that littered the ground from their duel yet. Maybe he still had time.

He shoots up quickly, too quickly, and his spinal fluid rushes to keep up. His head pounds and he feels wetness trickling down the side of his face from his ear. He is knocked off balance once again by the dizzying nausea that hits, but catches himself before barreling forward, following her tracks.

She hadn't made it far. In a clearing up ahead, he sees the small outline of her body placed delicately in the snow. Tunnel vision, the same he experienced at the beginning of this night towards her, once again descends, and everything else in the world fades except her.

He charges towards her, the snow growing denser in the open field. It was free to fall here unimpeded by the forest trees. A hundred yards turned into to eighty turned into seventy.

A sharp pain flashes across his chest followed by the familiar growl of Shyriiiwook.

It is more than a warning, more than the stern reprimands about being careful Chew...the Wookie had given him as a child. It is a threat with every intention of becoming more.

Kylo stops immediately, his vision blowing out from just Rey take in everything around. The Wookie stands much closer to Rey than he does, his Bowcaster pointed now directly at Ren's heart. Kylo runs the calculations in his head of every possible permutation laid out before him. The Wookie holds a range weapon, he does not. Even at full speed, the Wookie's long strides against his would have Rey in the Falcon before he was halfway there. He knows from his teenage years the Wookie is not susceptible to mind tricks. They stand across the field, Kylo's dark eyes boring into the Wookie's, hooded in fur. In their standoff, Kylo can feel Rey's body temperature dropping in the snow between them.

His concern for her shoots another variant into his head: why a warning shot? The Wookie handled a Bowcaster with skill, had laid people to waste with it far before his birth. He rarely missed. And yet, this was the second time the Wookie had failed to pierce his heart.

The truth of it froze him where he stood.

Chewbacca, noticing the complete apprehension on Ren's part, in one motion lunges for Rey, scooping her up with the Bowcaster's aim at Ren never wavering.

Chewbacca wants to hold Rey to warm her, but he needs one hand free to keep his threat on Ren real. He slumps Rey over his shoulder, causing her to scream out as the wound Chewie hadn't seen makes contact with his shoulder.

Kylo unfreezes as he hears Rey's suffering.

It is all frenzy. Chewbacca runs for the door of the _Falcon_ as her screams suddenly evaporate into the night air, the pain knocking out her conscious mind for the second time. Kylo knows it is futile but he runs anyway, his cloak whipping behind him.

By the time he gets to where Rey's impression landed, the _Falcon_ 's blue engines are already melting away the snow in front of him. He slowly clenches and unclenches his gloves as he watches the Falcon fade, before running his fingers over the skin of the wrist that had touched Rey.


	3. Chapter 3

"The internal damage is immense. We had to reopen the wound and remove part of her reproductive system. We were able to prevent septicemia, but..."

Leia winces as Dr. Kalonia's report trails off. Her eyes move past the doctor to Rey's prone body, her hand being held by Finn, his face wet and glossy as he stares at the subject of the conversation's face.

"Leia, we will do everything we can to make her comfortable, but it is still very touch and go." Dr. Kalonia's voice drops low at the end of her sentence. Finn's head jerks in the direction of the two women.

"Is there any hope?" Finn's voice breaks as he stares open mouthed at Dr. Kalonia's words. It was exhausted, a mix of despair and anger.

Leia moves past Dr. Kalonia as if she is floating. She looks deeply into Finn's eyes, assuring him quietly.

"There is always hope" Leia replies, and with that, she takes Rey's free hand, and Finn's as well, into hers. They share a sad smile before both turning their gazes to Rey's peaceful face.

A week passes with not much change. They all take shifts, Rose, Poe, Finn, and Chewie. Leia becomes the unofficial night watchman, her own insomniatic tendencies perfectly suited to the position. Dr. Kalonia's tests always reveal something different, but her general consensus is that the worst of it is over, and now they just need to wait and see.

* * *

It is Poe there when she wakes. As she blinks away the coma, her eyes focus on his body which lays sleeping in the chair next to her, having taken over from Leia in the very early morning hours. She hears BB-8 quietly whirring next to him as well. A small smile graces her heavily medicated lips as she realizes they are alright, the mission had not failed totally, even if she had. She is terrified to use her muscles, but she wants to catch a glimpse of the sleeping droid on the floor, to make sure that all his parts are accounted for after the battle. As she engages her abs, a dull pain shoots through her, but it isn't the inferno it was when she last was last conscious. She uses her elbows to prop her up and slowly edges her vision towards the corner of the bed when the darkened corner behind Poe and BB-8 starts to move.

She stiffens.

The black mass moves forward into the dim lighting of the medical bay.

The medications make it hard for her to focus, hard for her to find an internal locus, hard for her to contact the force, to reach out to it to steady her. She blinks a few times to ensure it is not her groggy mind playing tricks on her. When the shape doesn't disappear, but instead, moves closer to her, fear courses through her body. She reaches wildly for the force but it doesn't yield to her in her fear. She grips the handrails on either side of her, bracing, her soft, tan face lifting to catch Kylo's pale, angular one as he steps into the fluorescent lights of the infirmary.

Her scream, which feels detached from her, reveals a fear she had forgotten in the moments since her consciousness returned to her. The forest floods back to her. The reality of her true situation slams back down.

Kylo's eyes soften in...is it pity? Confusion? Despair? Rey feels the sharp pricks of IVs loosening from her veins as she recoils her body away from the figure, drawing herself into the wall behind her.

Then, BB-8 high pitched wail is in the air, startled by Rey, and just as quickly, Poe's arms are around her ball of a body, his chin on her shoulder, lips next to her ear whispering something she can't hear in the confusion.

She squeezes her eyes shut and focuses solely on Poe's careful grip on her back, the sound ceasing out of her, but her mouth not closing. She opens her eyes again and Kylo is gone.

"Rey….Falcon….Okay….We're here" is all she manages to hear between the sobs that come as she buries herself in his shoulder.

* * *

Leia comes to her often in the night, when everyone else is asleep. Their routine is the same, with Leia's shaky hand smoothing Rey's unkempt hair before sitting next to her on the bed. Sometimes Rey wakes and they talk about the day's events on the Falcon, about strategy, about Luke. Sometimes they just sit together as they both read the Jedi texts, as has been their ritual for the last two years. Leia is often as confused as Rey by them, but offers invaluable grains of knowledge where she can, and gets C-3PO to translate where needed.

Sometimes, Rey is asleep, the cycle of her medicine leaving her groggy and unaware. Leia still comes, but the talk is different when Rey is asleep. Leia apologizes too much, apologizes for sending her out alone with only a few days of any real, formal training. Apologizes for thinking, after what Rey had told her happened on the Supremacy , that maybe, maybe this young woman could do what no one else had done and bring her son back. Leia chastises herself, for being foolish to send her, for being foolish in the face of the Supreme Leader.

Most of all, she apologizes for him. For what used to be her son.

Even deep in her sleep, Rey can hear Leia's words. Leia's force sensitivity bleeds in to the static of her sleep. Rey notices, with not an immeasurable amount of concern, that now more than ever, Leia's presence looms large in the force. Her stomach turns at the theory of why this is, and Rey tries to calm it, by rationalizing that after using the force so totally to save herself after the bridge of her ship had been destroyed, she was now more deeply rooted in it than ever.

A part of her knew this wasn't true. The same part of her that always knew her parents would never reclaim her. The truth was that Leia was dying. She buries it deep within her and squeezes Leia's hand more tightly with each passing night.

It only takes a few days for Rey to start meditating again. In her heavily medicated state the force felt like water slipping through her fingers, something she desperately wanted, but would flee from her the more she grasped at it. She had blamed her inability to harness the force for Kylo being able to come through, in the way their bond used to present him, that night in the infirmary. After Crait, the bond tried to reopen, impossibly after Snoke's death. The first thing she looked for in the old Jedi books was force bonds, and she quickly walled herself in. Since then, she had only seen him in her meditations, a blurry black mark, and even that was too much, but she could never figure out how to erase him completely.

She knew she needed to keep her own balance if she wanted the force to stop showing her him, to stop presenting him as some sort of antidote to her own confusion on this path she never asked to walk.

She takes time to reflect, on the edge of meditation. The Jedi and the Sith, they were just stories, just legends, to her. Even as a child on Jakku, she scoffed at traders who would wax poetic on the Galactic Civil War. She had no delusions of grandeur. Sure, she fantasized about being a Y-Wing pilot after her billionth time practicing on her flight simulator, but never about being a force user. It was just a silly story made up by silly people who had time to think about silly things. She never was afforded that luxury. Survival, water, trade, that was her life. Until BB-8 showed up. Until Finn ran into her.

And now she was caught up in this space opera with the rest of them. She was a part of it. The propaganda sent out to children now included her face, and her story of triumph against Ren was repeated as far as the Outer Rim. The scar on his face, the one the First Order tried to hide in their own propaganda, was her trophy, and everyone knew it was her who had marked him.

She grimaces at the thought of them being so tied. But more, she grimaces at the thought that some other little girl was at this very moment hearing Rey's story and romanticizing war, dreaming that one day her own little droid would save her from a life of labor.

Rey's eyes well with tears. She brings her hands down to her own wound, ripping off the bandage. She traces the jagged scab as it dips from the top of her hip bone inwards. A sob she wasn't expecting escapes, and the hand not on her lesion shoots up to her mouth to quiet it. How much would she lose in this war? How many of her possible futures had been killed already?

She spent her whole life trying to survive and thought once she found a place to belong she would get to stop fighting. The truth was that she had to fight even harder to keep what she had found.

She gathers herself, reapplies a fresh bandage, and wipes her tears.

What would life be like after this war? If there was an after for any of them. Rose and Finn might settle somewhere warm, and bind together. They might start a family, and Rey might be called Aunt by the little Ticos. Poe might travel the galaxy, this time not for war, but for the adventure of it. Rey imagines BB-8's wonderous "ooohhs" as they pass by her vision's gas giants and through glittering ice fields together.

And what would become of Rey?

She didn't have a fantasy for that, no happy package she could play in her mind for herself.

A darker question loomed. What if this war was never truly over? She grew up in the boneyard of the Imperial fleet. Her home had been the death knell of the Empire. The shadows of this struggle between light and dark drenched her scavenging youth. She survived off the scraps of it. She was only now beginning to realize how a part of her this war has always been.

Could this truly be called a war? War's end.* This struggle between light and dark seemed to be eternal.

In the days since she had awoken, she had taken to studying Leia's face during briefings she attended when she was well enough to walk again. Rey's strength seemed to grow, while Leia's weakened. Rey tried to memorize the lines that traversed Leia's face, trying to read her life like a map. This was a woman who had been fighting since 19, just like Rey. This was a woman whose whole life had been a struggle to survive. There was beauty in it. Her love for her brother, her love for Han, her love for Chewie (though they could (still) get on each other's nerves). But more than just her compassion, she was strong. She was the one who held the rebellion together when Luke disappeared. She was the one who held her head high and soldiered on when her son left, and then her husband. She is the one STILL here after that son murdered her husband. Her own flesh killing her deepest ally, the man she loved for 34 years. Leia is still fighting, through all the victories and deep, deep losses.

There were worse things than to grow to be Leia, that wasn't the question. But the fact that her life unfolded this way because of how the galaxy manipulated the force, because of how people pushed and pulled and exploited it, that haunted Rey. This wasn't new, it was accepted, that there was dark and light and those two would always be at odds with each other. It was the status quo and no one thought they could change it, they were resigned to always fight in this never-ending conflict.

Kylo thought he could change it. Kylo wanted to break the cycle. And she had thrown it in his face. More than once.

Her thoughts betray her, wandering back to the throne room. Back to his hand, timid and waiting for her to take it. Back to the way he said, "Please", so desperate, so genuine, and the bloom of hope it had spurned deep in her belly.

He had wanted to change it all. He had wanted to try something else, to forget the Jedi and the Sith, and she had rejected him, to perpetrate it.

No, not perpetrate. She corrects herself. His idea was right, but his methods were wrong. The Resistance had saved so many in the years since then. None of that would have happened if she had taken his hand and allowed him to destroy them. She had made the right choice, the only choice.

But, nonetheless, she had made the choice that extended the war. The thought haunts her as she enters into meditation.


	4. Chapter 4

It takes Rey a week more to feel strong enough to start training again. During the day, the rear cargo hold of the _Falcon_ was hers, cleared from all of the sleeping bags that littered it to hold the Resistance during the night. They had more room now, having spent the last two years collecting and rebuilding. They even had a freighter, and a new fleet of X-Wings. Well, a used fleet of X-Wings, but new to them. Still, there wasn't enough room for everyone, for all the new recruits who were showing up every day, none of which Leia turned away.

Leia, especially, is skeptical of her training again so soon, but a lifetime of being a strong willed person has taught her that it is futile to try to change the minds of the strong willed, so she saves her energy on this one.

Poe and Rose tell her to rest more, with Poe basically threatening to withhold BB-8, a necessary component in her training, if she didn't just get back in bed. His threats are ultimately empty, but Rey weirdly appreciates how deeply concerned he is, believing his strong fervor is enough to make up for the fact that no one cared even a fraction of that amount about her for the first 18 years of her life.

But Finn doesn't bother, knowing her well enough to know she won't listen. More selfishly, though, he doesn't try to sway her away because he secretly misses the time they spend together during her training.

Finn is the best close range combat fighter they have in the fleet. A life of Phasma's tutelage had made sure of that. It made sense that they would train together. Rey trusted him more than anyone else in the galaxy, and he had hand-to-hand skills that dwarfed anyone else's on the _Falcon._ Yes, they were on a ship with career military personnel, but Finn's whole life had been about becoming the ultimate weapon.

When she walks into the training room for the first time after her duel with Kylo, Finn and BB-8 are already waiting for her. It has only been three weeks, but it feels like an eternity. BB-8 wheels past Finn when he sees Rey and she bends down, not totally without pain, to adjust his antenna, completing their not-so-secret greeting.

Finn laughs at the excited droid, "I guess we all know who he loves most."

"Was there really ever a question?" Rey smiles as she bends back up, focusing on not grabbing her side as it burns with her movement.

"Technically I have saved his metal butt from imminent death like three more times than you, but that's cool, I mean, I get it." BB-8 mechanically chuckles before gliding back and brushing himself against Finn's legs, "No, please, I don't need your pity. I'm just the consolation prize."

BB-8 beeps sadly.

Finn laughs before bending down and patting BB's domed head, "I'm just playing buddy." He looks up at Rey from his kneeling position, "You ready?"

"As ever," Rey smiles and pulls her quarterstaff from her back.

"Ah, we're going old school, I like it" Finn responds as BB-8 dances around them. Quarterstaff training is BB's favorite because it means he gets to roll around and act like foreign obstacles, instead of just holo-project like he does when she trains with her saber.

Finn walks to the wall and pulls his own down. They both lean into their positions.

"Ready?" Rey poses.

"Set" Finn affirms.

"GO" all three of them, even BB-8 in his own way, yelp, before the room explodes in movement once again.

* * *

They settle back into their routines. Finn is careful with Rey, but not too careful that she resents it. Rey joins Rose back in their shared bunk. Rose is initially scared to cuddle together as they had before Rey's injury, fearing she would hurt Rey, so Rey takes to crawling into Rose's bunk, instead of the vice-versa of how it usually went. Eventually, that returns to normal, too.

Poe and Rey resume their squabbles in the cockpit of the _Falcon_ , but the time Poe spends there is more and more sparse with each passing day. Rey and Chewie find themselves alone in the cockpit most days, as Poe starts to take over many of Leia's tasks as she grows weaker. Honestly, Rey likes Chewie's style a bit more than Poe's, and is grateful he is a Wookie of few words. She feels more at ease around Chewie, and even takes to laying her head against his shoulder during especially long shifts and napping, something she would have never tried with Poe, his sense of duty too strong to allow any semblance of napping from his co-pilot. She and Chewie have an understanding, especially after what he did to save her from Ren. She was indebted to him for life.

A week passes before Leia is unable to hide her condition from the crew. Rey had known for weeks, and Poe for a little less, but the rest of them were blissfully unaware of their General's rapid deterioration.

In the course of four weeks, Rey and Leia's positions switch entirely, with Rey coming to sit on Leia's bed during the night as she convalesces. Except it wasn't truly a convalescence, because Leia was not getting better, would never get better. Rey shutters at the thought.

Rey knows she should be asking Leia about every possible thing. About her past, about the force, about what history she knows. About Ren. But she can't will herself the courage to ask. Somehow, asking these big questions of Leia would make it all real, would solidify, for both of them, that Rey didn't think Leia would pull through. So they talk about the Jedi texts and about the others. They riff and tease lovingly on Poe and Chewie. They laugh at how nervous Threepio becomes seeing Leia in the infirmary bed (even though secretly Rey empathizes heavily with his feelings). They think up names for Rose and Finn's future kids. Anything to avoid talking about what really matters.

Until one night, Rey is talking about something particularly interesting she found in the Jedi texts about healing, when Leia puts her hand over Rey's.

"Rey, you can stop," Leia's voice comes out in a tone Rey has never heard from her before, it is almost sweet.

"What do you mean?" Rey closes the book and looks deeply at Leia.

"You're not going to find anything in those books that will save me. Or him."

"You don't know that."

"I do." Rey's face falls into a frown at Leia's certainty, "Listen to me, before you came back from the _Supremacy_ , I knew my son was gone. I knew I needed to cut off all hope from him to do what needed to be done. But after you came back, after you told me what he had done, what he had said to you, all that hope came rushing back."

Rey squeezes her hand a little more tightly.

"Now I think that hope was wrong. It led me to put you in harm's way when I wasn't one hundred percent sure. I should have never risked you like that. I was blinded by my hope, and it made me put someone I love very dearly in peril. I am so sorry for that, Rey."

"I wanted it too, Leia. I knew the risks and I went. It's not your fault. He is not your fault."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong. He is my fault. He is all mine. He insured that by killing Han. Everything that is in Kylo Ren is there because I put it there, or wasn't paying enough attention when someone else did."

"You can't do that to yourself…"

"I am done hoping I will see his face walk through the door every time it opens, Rey. I am done believing he will come back to me and weep in my arms so I can hold him just one more time. I'm done scanning comms just to see if I can hear his voice again. I can't do this anymore."

"You have to keep fighting," Rey words rasp out, her throat burning from trying to hold back tears.

"My sweet girl," Leia reaches up and tucks Rey's hair behind her ear before using her thumb to dry her first falling tear, "I've been fighting my whole life. It's time for me to join Han and my brother. It's time for peace."

"Please," Rey's sobs come out messy and desperate. Leia keeps holding her face, allowing Rey to lean into her grasp.

"Shhh…" They sit like that until Rey calms herself.

Rey can't look into Leia's eyes anymore. They're too much. Too much Leia, too much Kylo, too much.

"Go get Poe and Chewie for me, please" Leia withdraws her grasp from Rey's face and instantly Rey misses it.

Rey obeys, wanting to stay forever, but also not feeling strong enough to stay another second. Before she leaves Leia calls out, "And the droids, too." Rey doesn't need to question which droids.

She gathers them all and stands outside the door in silence with Chewie, R2, and C-3PO, as Poe walks in. When he walks out minutes later, his face is more pale than Rey has ever seen, and they hug for a long time.

R2 and C-3PO are next, they stay only a little while, but when they come out both are totally silent. Rey didn't think they were programmed to be that quiet, based on her previous interactions with them, but here they were.

Chewie is last, and the loud groans and growls that make their way from the room as he and Leia talk cause her tears to start again. Poe reaches his hand out and grabs her knee when he notices, letting her know she's not alone. She smiles weakly back at him before placing her hand over his, sending the same message back to him.

Chewie comes out and ushers them all into the room. Leia looks smaller than she did even 30 minutes ago when Rey last saw her.

Leia smiles weakly at them all, before holding out her hands for Rey and Chewie to take. Poe kneels down close to Chewie, while Threepio and R2 gather close in with Rey.

"I want you all to know how much I love you" Leia's voice feels small and far away, even though Rey is only inches from her. "May the force be with you, until we meet again."

Chewie lets out a soul shattering roar the second Leia slips away. Rey can feel the exact moment Leia reunites with the force, and her heart weeps and triumphs simultaneously.

In that moment she feels something else in the force, too. From far away, she feels a man in black stumble. Grief is everywhere and she can't tell whose it is.

* * *

They bury her a week later, and it takes Rey a day or two past Leia's funeral to be able to face the idea of meditation again. She knows it will help her, but she is also so afraid of what she may see there.

She enters into the force plane, her tears drying and evaporating off her cheeks. Briefly, a thought that she might feel Leia here makes her stomach turn in hope. Sometimes she felt others in this plane, others besides him . In life, Leia's whispers were there, guiding her through her coma, watching her through her training. All others felt different than Kylo, though. Kylo was a mass in the field, and all others were just spectres, floating past.

In her first attempts in this place she would try to listen to all of them, like she had in Maz Kanata's cellar when the saber called to her. They would flood her soul and make her nauseous. But now she had learned to accept their deluge freely, to wade through the stream with them, not against them. Some of the ghosts she would feel were just that, ghosts. Long gone force users, both Sith and Jedi, dark and light.

Once, in a particularly wrought period of her training, where nothing was making sense and she just wanted to give up, she thought she heard Luke's faint, faint voice whisper from miles and inches away at the same time say, "Keep going, kid."

Now, she looks here for some absolution of her pain. If she had just controlled her emotions, if she had just focused more, if the blade had never hit her, Leia's last link to her son would never have been broken. Leia's heart might not have been broken. Leia might still be here.

The plane is static when she steadies herself enough to accept the force. She is alone. She allows the tendrils of the force to wash her of emotion.

A stuttered breath from behind her whips her around, but her focus and center do not break. In the distance, a crumpled black figure decomposes into a mess of a man. It is as if she is looking over the top of a fire at him, but no flame separates them. The heat shimmer between their two bodies makes him appear waving, faltering in and out of the force.

She can feel his despondency, but it is different. He doesn't become an inexplicable mass. His signature is almost weightless as it flickers.

Compassion gets the best of her and she does something she has not done willingly in the force since Ahch-To: she begins to walk towards him. She had been forced to him in this design before, his weight sucking her in, but she had never done so of her own accord.

It takes longer than she expects to reach him. She wants to stop, to turn away, his gloom rising like bile in her, but she never does.

When the stuttering dark haze lays directly in front of her, she bends her knees to crouch near him. Her hand rises up, but she stills before she touches him.

She grazes his cloaked back with the lightest of touches and shuts her eyes. When she reopens them, she is no longer in the force.

But she is not back on the _Falcon_ either.

A huge, expansive room engulfs her. Her pupils shift with the light change, struggling to expand to take in the dim glow. She shoots up as the fuzzy mass in front of her becomes a crisp Kylo Ren. He is almost in a prayer, his knees tucked under his body, his forehead touching the floor. But this isn't a prayer. He doesn't notice her. Rey slowly backs away from him. All her cleansed emotions rush back and dizzy her.

This was a mistake. This was a mistake. I want to go back.

She continues her trajectory backwards until she thuds, hard, into a wall behind her.

At the sound, Kylo's face flashes towards her, white against the darkness of everything around him. It is shining. She can't tell if it is just a trick her mind is playing or if his face is actually wet from tears. His expression shifts too quickly for her to notice any one emotion. He stares at her now with something between a snarl and disbelief.

She slides down the wall until she sitting flush against it, cradling her knees to her body.

Kylo turns his face away from her to stare at the wall behind him.

"Why are you here?" he asks into the wall, still not looking back at her.

"I told you that you weren't alone once. I meant it." The words leave her mouth on autopilot. They sting the air and she wishes she could shove them back in.

He tries a menacing scoff, but it comes out sounding sad and exhausted.

"Is that why you left the _Supremacy_? Is that why you walled up our bond? Is that why you have fought me every chance you've had? To make me feel less alone?"

He turns and looks directly at her as he poses the last question.

Her face reddens and his eyes become too much, she exhales as she shuts her eyes, a tear streaming down her cheek as she does.

"And now what? Your beloved General is dead and you think what? I needed you? I wanted you?"

She stops breathing. She was so fucking stupid. She starts to claw back at the force plane, but she finds it inaccessible. Her emotions are too volatile now to accept meditation.

He feels her like a wild animal trying to flee from him and the familiar panic of losing her stirs in his gut.

"Wait." It is small when it escapes him.

She starts breathing again, and opens her eyes to meet his.

She feels him stall. Neither of them know what to say to one another after all this, after these last years, these hits and misses. They sit in silence for minutes, and their breathing synchronizes.

Finally, he opens his mouth to ask her something, but thinks better of it, after the way his last questions made her skittish.

She catches it in his thoughts anyway.

"Its healed completely. You missed most of my internal organs."

"Most?"

"Yes, most." She repeats, not wanting to give him the detailed medical records, or talk about her womb with him.

He catches it in her thoughts anyway.

"Oh." It comes out as a wince. Kylo's eyes droop and Rey knows that he heard which organ it was.

They both exhale in unison. An awkward silence descends on them, full of the timelines of possible futures lost in this war. He shifts so his full body is open to her.

She is the one to break the silence, shrugging.

"It's not a great loss. It is not like that was ever an option for me. Not with this war that will never end." She can't look at him when she says this. Instead, she angles her chin up and focuses her now adjusted eyes to the ceiling above, draped in black and red cloth.

He looks at her neck as it trembles, giving way to the blood pumping aggressively behind it, betraying her external calm facade.

He doesn't know why he asks, but something inside him urges it out of him. It may be his only time, ever, to talk to her like this, to be this open, so he risks it.

"What about her?" Rey's head snaps back to watch Kylo as he questions. "She didn't make you believe it could be an option?"

"Her?" Rey asks, confused, her head tilting to the left and her eyes narrowing, scrutinizing.

Ren grows angry at her insolence in the face of his vulnerability, but clarifies through clenched teeth anyway, "The child. In the forest where we last fought."

Kylo could see Rey's whole body seize. Every muscle tightened at the mention of that vision. Rey's eyes widen, opening up her whole face. Her face is not full of incredulity, though, as Kylo expected. Instead, she looks fully bewildered.

" _Her_?" Rey repeats again, her genuine confusion unmistakeable through the bond. She really has no idea what Kylo is talking about.

It was Kylo's turn to seize. Rey hadn't seen her, the little girl in the forest. In the weeks since, Kylo had thought so much about that girl with his eyes and her everything, the things that they shared in that one tiny vessel. But their visions had done this before. Shown them two drastically different things. How could she not have seen her? What had she seen? What future did the force present to Rey? She hadn't seen the child?

"No" Rey replies to his thoughts.

Kylo's heart drops.

"No, I mean, it was a boy that I saw."


	5. Chapter 5

A pause passes between them before Rey speaks again, her voice coming out stern, almost cruel, but with the undertones of a plea, "Please Kylo, don't ever talk about that child ever again. It was never the truth. It's a joke that the force or something keeps playing on us, like this bond. It was never possible, but now more than ever, it will never, ever be."

"That's not the way the force works" Kylo responds, clearly expecting this reaction on her behalf.

Rey stutters out a breath. Of course it's not. None of what has happened between them is normal for the force. And yet, here she is. Sitting impossibly across the room from this man. There is no way she is force projecting and this bares none of Snoke's influence, this is something else. She recoils at this paradox.

Kylo sighs deeply. He pauses and an anticipation grows in the air. He has to ask.

"What did he look like Rey?"

Her eyes narrow at him, rage and spite burrowing down. He never listens. He never sees what she wants.

"Please just stop" Rey's voice is low and dangerous.

"Because the girl, she was you and me..."

"STOP!" Her anger cuts her out from his thoughts and she can't tell if he is earnest or just being an asshole, but she stops him before he can say anymore.

He stares at the floor as her voice reverberates. It rings in this empty chamber for longer than she expects.

She knows she can get out of here, but she needs a handle on her emotions. She unhooks her legs and sits crossed legged, smoothing down her bunched up tights and placing her hands on the insides of her knees. She starts to breathe in as much as her lungs will allow. She closes her eyes.

A few minutes pass before she can sense the force again. The atmosphere of the room has made it unbelievably clouded and hard to face. She opens her eyes, and across from her, sees Kylo's face in his hands. An almost negligible tremble shakes his shoulders.

The reason why she reached out in the first place hits her as she is faced with this vulnerability she never thought she would ever see again from Kylo Ren. Her heart lunges out for him, at how exposed he is. She chastises herself for letting her emotions get the best of her in this conversation, she had meant it to go so differently.

"We buried her on Chandrila. In the field of sun-dew flowers east of the Tintolive tree."

"You should leave." He says through this hands, which are now tightening into fists, his leather gloves straining out loud with the tension.

"It was hasty, we didn't have time to recover the site with seedlings, so it should be easy to find."

"GET OUT!"

Rey scrambles to her feet, choking down the fear she knows will impede her exit if she doesn't go soon. She calls forward the force and turns to leave.

"I wanted you to know, even if you didn't. Someday all of this might be over and you might want to see it. I didn't want it to die with me." She pauses, needing to say something else before she is gone, maybe forever, from his life, "She loved you until the end. Even when you broke her heart, the pieces still rang out for you."

Through the whir of the beginning of meditation she hears his reply. "I know." His voice is sincere and pained. The authenticity of it causes her to still on the edge of the force plane.

He knows she's leaving, but a final question that he needs her to answer rings out between them, "Why Chandrila, Rey?"

"You know why."

"I want to hear it from you. How you heard it."

Rey's whole body swells with breath and she steps fully back into Kylo's bedroom. She gathers herself. She hadn't expected this, for Kylo to respond in this way. She wasn't sure she was ready to talk about any of this. But when she looks at Kylo, she knows something in him needs this.

"The only time I could truly see Leia, and not the General, is when she would lapse into a memory of her time on Chandrila. It seemed like the one pocket of happiness she was afforded in the struggle of what became her life. She had Han there." Rey pauses before adding the next bit, "She had Ben there."

Kylo winces, knowing that Rey was not referring to him anymore when she used that name.

"When she ultimately succumbed, it was Chewie who suggested the sun-dew fields. We didn't question him, even when it meant risking detection near the city. It fit." Tears start to stream down Rey's face and she doesn't care, doesn't try to wipe them away.

Ren spits out a sigh to the air above him. His eyes angle up and away from her. Something breaks between them and his words flow out like lava, stinging the air between them, "We would go there every cycle to watch the sun's equinox, when it would line up perfectly with the Crystal Canyons to the north. It was the best spot on the whole damn planet, and it was ours." The words come out with so much difficulty, contorting Kylo's whole body. He somehow becomes smaller and larger at the same time. He digs his nails into his palms so deeply that Rey can barely see the tops of his fingers.

Rey freezes, not wanting to move and break him out of this reverie. She had seen tinged memories of his mother when she invaded his mind, none of them very nice, but he had never willingly given her anything. She didn't want to break whatever spell this was.

"We would take enough for three days, and we would camp underneath the stars. I'm surprised the Wookie remembers. He came a few times, the smuggler too, but ALWAYS Leia. No matter what, no matter how busy. I would always get those three days with her. Even if I only saw her for a few hours the rest of the cycle, those three days were..."

He was someplace else, maybe in that field with her again, his words pouring out, needing to face the air. Rey noticed his consciousness wandering and felt brave enough to advance toward him, slowly, noiselessly. It was hard to hear Leia's name on his lips, but exhilarating, even if he couldn't say Han or Chewbacca's.

"We would light a fire every night and she would sit me between her legs as we stared into it. She would tell me fantastical stories about swallowing sand pits and princesses wielding blasters and men being frozen alive. It took me years past my adulthood to realize that these weren't fairytales. She was telling me about her life without telling me about her life." He sighs, his Adam's apple quivering as he continues to stare at the ceiling.

He pauses, thinking.

"Of course, I came to despise it, despise her. Snoke was all over, eventually, telling me that three days couldn't make up for the months of neglect, that it was only a manipulation on her part," his voice sounds resigned. 'But before all that, those were probably the only moments in my life where I was truly...happy," the last word comes out almost as a question, a word unpracticed on his lips.

Kylo's eyes finally come down and he faces the empty room in front of him. He realizes she had gone, sometime in his long speech about Chandrila, and he hadn't heard, hadn't sensed her slip away. She had left him again, just as everyone else had. Intense loneliness sweeps through him harshly at the realization that he is alone once again in this pain.

"Tell me more," the voice to his left startles him enough for him to jump, very slightly. When he turns, his eyes find hers immediately. She was not close, but close enough that if he stretched out to her, he could touch her. She sways a little farther from him as he thinks it.

"Don't worry, I won't," the promise he makes in response to her shrinking from him brings her body back to him, a little. She scoots closer by less than an inch.

"What else?" she posits again.

He pours out the memories he thought he had destroyed. He purges them into her. Rey listens, so intently, so achingly that it hurts him to look at her in more than glances.

At some point, he closes his eyes, but continues to talk. His head droops down until he is tilting slightly closer to her. She doesn't clench or move away when he moves, she trusts him not to touch her. He talks himself to sleep, with her right next to him, giving nods or affirmatives when appropriate.

When he wakes, his back is stiff from the floor. Rey is gone, but his hair feels displaced, as if someone had run their fingers through it while he slept.

* * *

When she is back on the _Falcon_ she weeps. Her sobs are uncontrollable, full of every emotion, for Leia and Kylo and what was. Her stomach heaves and she slips to the floor, wanting to stop the spinning she feels. What she had kept buried for the past two years bubbles to the surface like all the secrets she had ever kept hidden deep inside her. Her greatest hope and her worst fear combine and mingle in her brain:

He's still in there.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey lazes in the hammock, really just an old parachute rigged up in the common room, as Poe deals the cards on the table in front of them. As she contracts her abs to grab them, the scar tissue on her side snags, reminding her, even in these moments of calm, of Kylo Ren.

She hurries him out of her mind and expertly plays a hand, laying out her cards on the folding table in front of her.

Poe's eyebrows shoot up in response to what Rey lays out.

"The student becomes the master" Poe teases, as he mindlessly scratches at the beard he has grown in his first few months as General. It suits him. Finn had tried to grow a beard at the same time, but it grew in patchy and sparse, highlighting the age difference between the two men. Finn has been bare faced since.

Poe gathers the cards and starts shuffling and dealing out the next hand. Chatter takes over the room, broken when Kaydel Ko Connix walks in.

Connix's doe like eyes light up as she strides towards Rey's table. Rey is the first at the table to notice her, and the two women share a brief smile. _She's found something._

Connix leans over to Poe, and whispers in his ear. Instantly, his demeanor changes from her friend Poe to her General Dameron.

"Sorry kids, I have to go deal with big kid stuff," he folds his cards in front of them, face up, so Rey can see how royally screwed she would have been on the next hand. He winks at Rey when he sees her staring at his cards, "Don't wait up." He stands and lets Connix lead the way to the war room, which was really just the forward Cargo hold.

Rey waits until he is totally out of the room, then makes eye contact with Finn and Rose who had been canoodling near the dejarik table.

She jerks her head in the direction Poe and Connix have just taken.

Finn and Rose, always up for an adventure, follow Rey out of the room, lightly stepping until they are just outside the forward cargo hold.

They press their ears to the durasteel jokingly, knowing they would never be able to hear through it, but scatter when C'ai Threnalli, Poe's wingman, enters through the doors for the meeting.

When the doors open, they all hear a snippet of the conversation.

"...It's only 12 parsecs away"

"Yes, but General Dameron, it's through an asteroid field"

"And?"

Rey and Finn catch eyes and smile.

Rose is already at the control panel, shorting the circuit just enough to keep the door open an inch. It is too little for anyone inside to notice, but still large enough for noise to travel through.

"Kriff, you're amazing" Finn whispers into Rose's ear.

"Duh," Rose retorts, before shushing him behind her.

"I'll lead the mission. I'll take my best pilots. This type of asteroid field is easy to navigate."

Groans ring out in the room.

"No, look, it's so close to the gas giant that the asteroids will be slow under its gravity. It will be just like wading through a still pond."

"Dameron, you're the General, you don't have to explain yourself. Just issue the order" a gruff voice from the room rings out, probably Threnalli.

"Right, fuel the ships and inform the Squadron. We leave at 0200."

Before they know it, Poe is out of the room and they are all still stammering in the hallway. Finn even starts whistling while looking at the ceiling above and Rose gives him a love tap to the stomach for being such a cliche.

Poe stands with his hands on his hips waiting like a big brother ready to chastise the young ones as the rest of the delegation seeps out of the hold.

Once all the more senior officers are out of earshot, Poe lets out an incredulous, "Really?"

He looks to the control panel near the door, still ajar from Rose's manipulation.

"Really?!" his tone is more disbelieving as he points to the exposed wires.

Rose rushes back and fixes what she broke, "Sorry, General."

A few seconds pass as he stares them down, they all look down at the ground with their guilt.

"You could have just asked me." He softens. "I was heading back to the common room to tell you all right now anyway. They found another planet, an old Resistance base. They think there are ships still on it."

"We're going with…" before she can launch into a rousing speech about how they're all in this together, Rey's firm voice is interrupted by Poe's.

"Yeah, yeah," Poe waves Rey's words off, "I already know. I'd rather you just come than to find you all stowed away in my landing gear when we get there."

Poe starts to walk away, leaving all three of their mouths hanging open. It usually wasn't that easy. Poe yells back to them when he reaches the end of the hallway, "Did you hear? 0200! Better get ready!"

The three of them scatter towards the launch bay.

* * *

Poe was right, the asteroid field was the laziest Rey had ever seen, and even the cargo ship they were in was in no danger. They are on the planet, named Nirauan according to their limited data, before they know it, using an old cargo ship they had salvaged about a year before to transport Poe's Squadron, along with Rey, Finn, Rose and BB-8. R2-D2 came too, being well acquainted with X-Wings and able to help, and of course, since R2 was there, C-3PO was on his heels, complaining about this change to his routine.

They spend days salvaging parts and making repairs, sleeping in the open air of the planet together. Rey loves the work. She knows better than anyone else what parts to grab and which to ignore. She is the unofficial arbiter of which fighters would fly again and which should just be scrapped for parts. At least her time on Jakku was good for something.

After about 4 days, they have their repairs almost under control and have salvaged about 34 X-Wings. They're not perfect, but they're needed. The mechanics and Threepio start to head back to the Cargo ship while the pilots all run to find the best ship to pilot back. Rey starts running with them.

Poe steps in front of her once she starts to hit her stride. She has to dig in her heels to avoid smacking into him as he holds up his hands and says, "Hey, not so fast, you're riding back on the Cargo ship kid."

Rey looks to his stubbled face, then looks behind him at the expanse of starfighters, then back to Poe's face, disbelieving, "Poe, there are more X-wings than pilots here. Let me handle one. You need the help. It will take forever with just your skeleton crew."

"It's too dangerous Rey," his voice comes out more paternal than he means it to. "I brought you because you're a damn good salvager and mechanic, but I can't let you fly one of these back."

"You said yourself that asteroid field was nothing. I know how to fly, you know I know how to fly, we've been flying together for YEARS, what's the big deal?" Rey is growing more and more pissed the longer he stands between her and the X-Wing she has her sights on.

"Not X-Wings, their controls are more sensitive, they're harder to handle than a giant clunker like the _Falcon_ ," Poe doesn't budge.

"Yes, X-Wings. I learned to fly on an X-Wing...kind of," Rey's expression betrays her lie as she tries to get her way.

Poe's eyebrows shoot up. He had never asked her where her flying skills came from, not even when they spent hours shooting the shit in the cockpit of the _Falcon_ on long missions. He never wanted to delve too deeply into her past, knowing that like most survivors, it probably wasn't pleasant. But this was news to him.

Rey capitulates, "Okay, it wasn't an X-Wing, it was a Y-Wing...simulator, but still. I've never gotten to fly a starfighter for real."

Poe looks at Rey, at how much she wants to help, at how much she could help. He was so frustrated with her for disobeying him openly, but he knew that she was him not too long ago. He sees so much of himself in her.

"Oh for kriff's sake, is this really what I put Leia through?" his voice is tired, but full of love.

Rey lets out a chuckle, "The student becomes the master."

A huge, dashing smile spreads out across Poe's, not General Dameron's, face, as he playfully grabs Rey's head under his arm and locks it in, rustling up her hair before pushing her out towards the X-Wings.

"Fine, but take that one, it's the most complete." He points right to the plane she had been coveting, "And BE. CAREFUL. And take Rose with you, you're both small enough to fit in there. She can help in case something goes wrong." Poe yells out the last bit, making sure Rose hears also.

Rose spins around from working on sautering one of the last of the fighters above them, "Okay, dad!" she yells out before returning to her work.

Rey laughs heartily. Poe laughs a little less.

"Also, you have to remind me to ask you about the Y-Wing simulator. I've never even seen one!" Poe's face doesn't lose his boyish smile.

"Sure thing boss!" Rey replies as she grabs Rose and drags her to her desired X-Wing, the letters AA-589 fading on its side.

R2 rolls up as they scramble inside, Rose adjusting her tool belt as they squeeze in together.

"Hey, do you wanna be our navigator?" Rey yells to the blue and silver droid below.

R2 lets out a cascade of happy beeps and rolls under the fighter's belly, which immediately grabs him and brings him into his once familiar position. The old friends interface their hellos, and R2's beeps turn into almost cries as the plane's systems recognize him and vice versa. Rey and Rose buckle themselves in, not realizing the reunion taking place just inches from their heads.

* * *

They traverse their way back to the _Falcon_ through the asteroid field, Poe leading the Squad, watching for any stray rocks that had been knocked out of orbit so he can warn his crew. In his periphery, he sees an object moving much too fast and erratically. His whole body tenses and he scrambles for his controls, before shifting quickly to see the object out of the visor of his helmet.

Rey and Rose are careening past him, barrel rolling through the field, laughing their heads off as R2 screams joyfully above. Poe opens the comms to them, initially going to yell at them for being irresponsible, but then he hears their laughs. He hasn't heard them laugh so fully since before Leia's death, months ago. He can't help but smile and in an instant tilts his joystick and flushes his thrusters, chasing after them in a roll as well. It ignites the whole Squad in a playful game behind them. They all tumble back to the _Falcon_ together.


	7. Chapter 7

The Resistance goes on like this, finding more and more old outposts, more and more traders and families and communities willing to help in whatever ways they can. The marginalized and oppressed, who had been quiet for so long, willed themselves to start fighting back. Slowly, they rebuilt their fleet with cargo ships, a medical ship, and even three new freighters. They're not as new or as pretty as what they had, but they're fast and strong, and even if they creak in jumps, they work.

This goes on until one day, Poe looks around and realizes they are back at fighting strength. It has taken three years since their decimation on Crait, but they are back. They are on Batuu, in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, when General Dameron realizes they can stop running and turn around and fight.

They are in the middle of fixing another fleet when he stands on top of the _Falcon_ and instantly grabs the attention of the working crowd below.

It is here where he turns to his troops, and rouses them with Leia's words. Rey stands in the crowd, looking up to see Poe as his speech begins. His words are few, but powerful, and Rey imagines them going out to the galaxy, imagines them existing far beyond this moment, throughout history. This is where the Resistance turned, she thought. This is where everything changed.

"General Organa, our Princess, once said, 'Hope is like the sun. If you only believe it when you see it, you'll never make it through the night.' We have made it through that night. The sun is on the horizon and it is because of you, all of you, who worked tirelessly every day over the last three years. You are not small, you are mighty. You are the reason the dawn now rises for the Resistance. LET'S GIVE THEM HELL" his voice rings out through the crowd as it erupts at his final words.

Rey yells out with them, tears welling in her eyes as she looks around. She used to be able to name every single Resistance fighter, and now that would be impossible, there are too many. There are scattered faces in the crowd she knows, yelling and hugging and crying. Behind her Rose and Finn find each other and kiss deeply. Chewie barrels towards her and before she knows it she's in the air, Shyriiiwook blaring in her ears, but she can't stop smiling in his embrace.

And just as suddenly, General Dameron's hand ushers them to the ships, urging them to start working again. This small victory was theirs, but they still had to get through dusk before the sunrise.

Rey runs back to the X-Wings to continue her work, but before she reaches them, General Dameron intercepts her.

"Rey! Let's take a walk" she can't quite read his voice. It's much more formal than it ever has been, perhaps because he is in full General mode now.

"Don't you need to...be doing...General stuff right now?" she was surprised that she was the first one Poe was talking to in this moment, after he just wrote history in front of her.

"It can wait" his voice makes something in her drop, and she follows him immediately.

They walk quietly up to the plateau above the troops, admiring the sea as it rolls out beside them. This planet was green and dewy and gorgeous and Rey loved the smell of salt that permeated it. Unlike the sites of some other abandoned Rebel bases, she would be a little sad to leave this one.

They stop at the peak and look down at the people below, all scurrying, all full of adrenaline for what was to come.

Poe's voice pierces the salty air, "Rey, I need you to stay behind with the _Falcon_ for this one."

She tilts her head towards him, hurt blossoming on her face, "What?" the sound ekes out of her.

"Rey, you are too important. I know I have let you get your way in the past, but I just can't with this one. You're the ONLY one of us who can kill Kylo Ren. Without you, we lose, I need you to understand that." Poe talks to the air in front of him, not looking at Rey. His voice is still that of the General.

Rey turns her whole body to his and hisses, "This is all just a game to you, isn't it? This isn't dejarik or Shah-tezh, General. We are not pieces to be won or lost."

Poe turns around and takes some steps back from the edge of the plateau, away from Rey, still not looking at her, he exhales heavily, "Rey, your youth is showing."

She wants to scream back at him but she knows that anger will get her nowhere. Instead, she breathes the damp air of the maritime planet and glares at him.

He closes the distance between them and lightly frames her shoulders with his hands. Both their expressions soften with their familiarity. He is tired of screaming matches with Rey, but also so thankful for their tiffs. She is one of the only people who still questions him, still make him feel like a human and not a warlord.

"Look" he turns her around to the valley behind them, to see the tiny rebels in the distance loading materials onto their now three large flagships, the _Falcon_ , and their cargo ships.

The amount of people is still sparse, but it has grown so much over the last three years. By the last count they had 2176 people travelling with them on all their ships, but more had pledged their allegiance on the planets they had travelled to and in the Outer Core, with more news everyday of pockets of resistance. "You are the difference between me losing some of them" he puts his hand out in front of her, obstructing her view from half of the little dots moving below, "and losing all of them", he turns his hand so she can no longer see any of them, nor the ships.

She sees the outlines of Finn and Rose, the giant outline of Chewbacca, the glints of Threepio and R2 and BB-8, and Connix's platinum hair all disappear behind Poe's hand.

"Do you get it? If we lose you…" Poe brings his hand back down on her shoulder.

"Yes Poe, I get it," her voice trembles with sadness, the familiar gloom of abandonment growing in her center.

He squeezes his hold on her shoulders more tightly before releasing them and walking back down to his fleet.

* * *

That night, Rey enters her training room, BB-8 hot on her heels, needing to get out some of the frustrations of the day. It was now solely her training room, there were now enough beds for Resistance fighters to sleep in on the other ships. The _Falcon_ was no longer littered with sleeping bags and fighters.

She centers herself as BB-8 projects a ball, a familiar stand in for her training. Her saber ignites on her side and she is jousting within seconds, her body the fulcrum of the blades, spinning them effortlessly and richoting the tiny hologram from blade to blade. She is graceful, even elegant, at first, words Rey would never imagine could ever describe her. Her mind smooths with the force, until an image of Poe's hand wiping out the fleet enters her mind. Her movements grow more frantic, the ball struggling to keep up with how quickly she is moving now. BB-8 rolls back a bit, to allow her more room but doesn't cut the projection. Rey is all flurry now, her whole body spinning with her saber as the ball accosts her from all angles.

Then, it's too much, she's out of control and she can't stop. She spins her weapon too quickly and it comes down on her, and for the second time in her life, she is touched with the lightbeam of a saber. She lets out a small scream.

"Rey! Are you okay?!" Finn's voice fills the cabin. Rey hadn't seen him staring at her from the entryway.

She grabs her leg. The blade had hit her just above the knee, but it was such a slight burn. It might not even scar. "I'm fine, I'm fine. I just feel stupid."

"I mean, I've never seen anyone impale themselves with their own saber before. Its gotta take real skill," Finn's voice is full of levity. Rey shoots him a look.

Finn reaches out his hands to her knee, and cradles it as he examines the cut.

"Finn, it's really nothing" Rey tries to pull away as she says it.

"Sit down" the levity in Finn's voice is faded and he is much more stern now.

"Finn, please, I just want to be alone" her voice whines into the room.

"No you don't," his truth tinges the air, "Sit down, Rey, please."

She does as he instructs. He takes a bacta pad out of his leather jacket. Finn always carries extras, being her defacto training partner, for whenever they bruise or get scratched up from ground attacks.

He pulls up her leggings and unwraps the bacta pad. It stings as he smooths it out on the area above her knee, but she is used to it. She has had more bacta on her than she can recount in these last three years. It is a necessary evil she wishes she had the first 18 years of her life on Jakku.

"Rough day?" he asks, his face concentrating on unsticking the wax paper from the remaining patch.

"Yeah. Rough day." Rey smiles weakly at this endlessly kind man.

He sits down next to her when he is done. "I talked to Poe. He told me what happened."

Rey straightens her legs out in front of her, "Yeah." She stretches her arms out with her legs, as if to convince Finn that it wasn't a big deal to her, but she knew she couldn't hide the truth from him.

"How are you feeling?" Finn sees through her nonchalant body language, of course.

"I get it. I just wish there was another way. I haven't been away from you guys since...since I made this thing" she holds up her now extinguished saber that had been dormant beside her.

Finn chuckles, "And even then we were right outside the caves."

Rey smiles, "I just...I wish it were different. Sometimes I fantasize about what my life would be like if I didn't have the force. What would ourlives be like, Finn? I would have never gone to Luke, would have never left you when you were so injured. Things might be so different if I were just normal." Her mind flashes to Rose, at the tiny prickles of jealousy that were way behind her. She is glad Finn can't read her thoughts.

Finn's mouth gapes open, "Rey, you saved me from death using the force on Starkiller base. That would have been the end of us right there if you weren't what you are." One side of her lip tenses upwards, knowing he is right, "Rey, you're a Jedi. You're maybe the last Jedi left. Yes, that makes you different, but we need that, we need you."

"I'm not a Jedi, Finn."

"Then why have we been reading Jedi texts? Why have we been practicing Jedi forms for the last three years?"

"It's more complicated than that."

"I don't think it is. You represent hope. When Luke sacrificed himself on Crait, that traveled throughout the galaxy, that helped us strengthen the Resistance. But you, you are what is keeping our numbers growing. You are the Jedi. Without you, there is no end to this war. You will rebuild the Jedi after all this is over and crush the dark down." His voice is so sure of her, so sure they will survive. It almost hurts.

She takes a few moments before talking again, "What if that's not the way to go? Rebuilding the Jedi? What if that's exactly what we shouldn't be doing?"

"What do you mean? You HAVE to rebuild. That's the only way to fight the dark." Finn has turned his whole body to her, separating their two bodies, almost not believing what he is hearing.

"Is it?" Rey's voice is small, but honest.

Finn's face is full of confusion and hurt, "Yes. I was taken from my family, trained to fight to the death, as nothing but an expendable, meaningless cog. I saw them build Starkiller, knowing that it would destroy millions. I have seen innocent people, children, slaughtered in front of me. All because the unchecked influence of the dark side. We need you. I need you, to believe that won't happen again. Don't run from this Rey, this is who you are, this is who you were always meant to be."

Rey's shoulders collapse as tears start to run down her face, "I don't know. I don't know anymore."

"It's okay, I know for both of us. It's okay," as Finn says it, he pulls Rey into him by her shoulders and kisses the top of her head.

Her head settles on his shoulder as tears roll down her cheek, dotting his jacket with beads of water. They sit like this for a moment, Finn not convinced he had made anything better.

"I never told you how I met Rose, not the truth," Finn breaths out, after a long while of just holding Rey.

"You lied to me about needing help from maintenance with a malfunctioning teeth cleaning unit? Nooo, really?" Rey's sarcasm almost drips as she sniffles and wipes her tears. She knew it was a lie, but didn't feel like the truth was necessary in this instance.

"Only a little."

Finn recounts his attempted escape from the Resistance and Rose's deep loyalty to the cause that kept him in their folds. Rey's face shifts through emotions as he talks, but Finn doesn't notice, focusing all his energy on articulating the meaning of this story.

"She STUNNED you?"

"The point is, I wanted to run. I wanted to leave it behind because I was so worried that I would mess everything up and you would come back to a Resistance that was disintegrating, but Rose didn't let me turn my back. And you did come back to a Resistance that was disintegrating, but we rebuilt it, all of us, together."

Rey smiles sadly, remembering that in a few days, she won't be part of their "together" anymore.

Finn notices, "What I'm trying to say is, all I knew was running. I ran from the First Order, I tried to run from Solo, from the Resistance, because I was scared of all of this, scared of what it meant. But once I stopped running, I found my meaning in all of it. Don't run from this Rey, don't run from what you truly are, and what you mean to the galaxy."

Rey reaches out and touches Finn's forearm, "I'm really glad you stayed. I don't know what I would have done without you."

"Well, good thing you'll never know now. I know you're scared, of being alone. I hate leaving. But we will be back together before you know it. You're my oldest and best friend Rey. Nothing, not even being the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy, will change that, or keep me away from you."

Rey smiles and squeezes Finn's hand more tightly, before Finn pulls her into a kneeling embrace. BB-8 breaks the moment by trying to snuggling between them, wanting to be a part of the family hug. They laugh and get back to training.

* * *

Space is colder than she could ever imagine. The sleeping style she acquired on Jakku, knees to her chest, hunched into her body, protecting all her internal organs, served her well on the _Falcon_ . It preserved her precious heat, keeping it swelled in her center. Some nights were worse, where she would not be able to control the soft chatter of her teeth.

The first night she bunked with Rose, when they still did not know each other, Rose climbed out of her bunk to silently join Rey, hearing the shivering, and nestled against her back. This stopped Rey's shaking almost immediately, because of Rose's physical warmth, but also because of the warmth of her soul. She had never known true kindness before she met Finn, and now a second person was offering it up, without the expectation of anything in return. This became Rey and Rose's ritual from then on.

The night after Poe's rallying cry and her training mishap, Rey poured out everything that had happened that day to Rose, and Rose held her as she cried. When all her tears were out, she turned to face Rose in the bed, and propped herself up on her elbow. Rey brushed Rose's bangs out of her eyes and smiled.

"Finn told me how you two actually met" Rey's voice is still shaky from crying, but holds a bit of humor.

Rose rolls her eyes, more at Finn than anyone else, "I'm surprised you bought the toothbrush thing for so long."

Rey laughs, "Did you really stun him?"

Rose's smile changes and her eyes widen, "Oh yeah! I forgot about that."

Rey laughs, "I am so jealous. I have fantasized about stunning him SO. MANY. TIMES."

"It was really satisfying. He flew like 10 feet."

"Whaaaat?" Rey's question comes out in a long laugh.

"I can't believe I forgot about it. I really have to make sure to watch my back, now that you've reminded him of that," Rose actually sounds as if she is plotting her pseudo-defense.

A beat passes between them.

"Thank you, Rose" Rey's voice is sincere through the frivolity.

"For what?" Rose turns her head on the pillow to more fully look at Rey above her, her grin disappearing in response to Rey's sincerity.

"For making him stay."

"Ah, anytime. Actually, can you thank me by being my personal bodyguard from here on out?" Rose's smile blooms once again.

"You know I have your back."

Rey snuggles into Rose's side and Rose brings an arm around Rey. Rey does something she never would have expected to happen after the day she had, she falls asleep smiling.


	8. Chapter 8

Rey is too wired to face Poe or Finn the next day, not after all the events of the day prior, all the emotions that had passed between them. She considers helping Rose and the other mechanics prepare for the mission, until, in her absent mindedness, she runs hard into C-3PO, who then tips into R2-D2, unwittingly starting a game of dominos with her body.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, here, let me help you." Rey helps Threepio to his feet before tipping R2 back upright. R2 lets out an appreciate few beeps.

"Oh, Master Rey, please excuse me, how clumsy of me!"

"It's my fault, really" she smiles as she lets them pass and resumes her path to the mechanics, trying to ignore the formal "Master" C-3PO insists on addressing her as.

"Oh R2, will you hurry? We're going to be late," she hears Threepio's anxious accent fade as they continue down the hallway.

Her strides stop suddenly and she turns around curiously to see the droids quickly vanish down the corridor. Her mind loops with questions...what would they be late for? Curiosity piqued, and with nothing else to really do, Rey reverses direction and follows the droids into a smaller supply room.

Inside she finds what looks to be a meeting of the machines. All the droids on the ship cluster in this small space. BB-8 whirs and rolls up next to her as she sits on a container in the back, trying and failing to go unnoticed. His spherical metal body brushes up against her shin and she adjusts his antenna, as is their greeting. After a few minutes of curiously watching, she realizes that the droids are slowly starting to form...a line?

C-3PO acts as air traffic control, imploring the droids to wait their turns. His worrisome anxiety comes in handy and they all quiet and wait patiently. He begins to clean and polish them, lubricating their squeaky cogs and rewiring faulty systems where he can. R2 stands next to him, his internal toolkit out and working to unscrew a droid's breastplate in front of him. Rey is confused for a moment at these unlikely ring leaders, but then she remembers: Threepio is the only one with opposable thumbs, and R2 has years of experience fixing broken things, having been Luke's. Of course they would be the ones to lead repairs.

She thinks back, who was in charge of the droids? They had been on a skeleton crew for so long and that job had been so far to the bottom of the list. It is then that she looks around at all the droids and notices how grungy and rundown they all are, with the exception of BB, who Poe cleans and services. BB practically shines, but seems to be there in solidarity with the rest of his brethren.

Rey shoots up after realizing this is some sort of underground maintenance shop, "Let me help you."

"Oh Master Rey, really, it's okay. I know you have much more important things to focus on than a few piles of tin."

"No, I really don't, Threepio. And this is important. I would be more than happy to help out."

"Well then, there's lubricant and parts behind you. I am just an interpreter, so really all I can do is shine and grease, R2 really is the mechanic, but it seems to have been working these past years." R2 beeps in agreement as he unscrews the ambulatory strut of the astromech droid in front of him too far, causing the poor thing to tip over.

"Oh dear, R2, will you be more careful?!" Threepio chides as he stabilizes the wobbling droid.

Rey spends the next couple of days away from everyone on the ship, fixing the droids. Rose brings her food and still warms her bed at night, but mostly, they all know that Rey needs time to adjust to what is to come, so they leave her alone. Her binary is as good as ever, and she spends her time telling cheesy jokes to the droids to pass the time. They all start flocking to her at whatever chance they get, and take to following her around the halls, igniting weird looks from other crew members.

They all need a lot of work, having been pushed to the wayside over the last few years. She stretches her rusty skills out on motherboards and hydraulic systems, employing all her honed skills from childhood. Granted, she was usually disassembling droids, but if she can take them apart, she can put them back together.

She feels like she knows what she's doing here. The tactile feedback the droids give her makes her forget for a while that her friends are all going to leave her behind. It is nice to keep busy and out of the way. She knows they have enough help with the ships in the mechanics core, where she usually spends her time when not training. Besides, it feels good to see the small army of droids grow stronger by the day.

She talks a great deal to Threepio about Leia during her repairs. R2 is more reluctant than Threepio, and part of her thinks he is purposefully secretive, but she shakes the thought from her brain. R2 is funny and charming, she focuses on those attributes rather than her unfounded suspicions.

After C-3PO and R2 see what Rey is doing for the others, they allow her to tune them up as well. Threepio is in dire need of a new overhaul, but his anxiety keeps Rey at bay for a bit. He agrees to let her look at him arm, at the very least, as he has had so much trouble with it. He lets out a worried, "Oh" when she twists his arm to resurface it, but he eases and begins to trust her once she replaces the it, good as new.

R2, on the other hand, loves being fawned over. He giggles as she scrubs him off, and Rey is amazed at the sand she finds buried between almost every bit of his machinery. She wonders how one droid could have so much hidden sand, especially because she had never seen him near sand in the three years she had known him. All misgivings about R2 are squelched when she works on him, and she empathizes with him more than any other thing on the ship. They both would always have sand in their hearts.

She is thankful for the trust the droids put in her, even if her human friends don't do the same.

On the tenth day of working with the droids, on the day her friends are set to leave the _Falcon_ , Poe comes to her. A First Order fleet had been detected in the Core Planet regions, and it was just small enough for the Resistance's rebuilt armada to practice for the larger battles to come. It wouldn't be a long mission, but it would be the first one she was not a part of since Crait.

Poe languishes at the door of the supply closet where Rey had spent the last week and a half. They hadn't spoken since Batuu, but only because Rey was actively avoiding him. She could rationalize the position Poe was in, as the General and her friend, and she wasn't mad at him, but she was terrified at being left alone. She knows he is there behind her, but she waits for him to talk first, and he does in a very Poe-like fashion, by letting out a slow wolf whistle.

"These droids are blinding. You think you've polished them enough?"

Rey turns and looks at Poe, dressed in full combat attire, leaning against the frame of the entryway. She is taken slightly aback by his orange jumpsuit contrasted against his pitch black beard and hair. She can't help but smile. She doesn't often notice just how handsome he is, but in this moment, she does. He smiles back, but there is a sadness there too.

He walks fully into the room and all the droids turn to look at him as he does.

"You have a full congregation, it looks like" he says, as he stumbles past a fleeing MSE-6 droid.

"Just getting them ready for the fight. Most of them are due at their battle positions in an hour," she looks down and smiles sweetly at a her flock, not wanting to look at Poe while she talks about the mission she's not a part of.

Poe takes her cue and looks down too. "Rey, I just wanted...I know...I..."

"It's fine, Poe, I get it," she wants to make this easier for him.

"I just...I don't want you to think I am doing this because I don't think you are capable, or strong enough. In fact, I'm probably risking lives by not taking someone as capable as you are on this mission. But I would be risking more lives if you came and something happened," his eyes dart to her face as he says the last word. "I have watched you grow so much over these last three years. You are our best shot, but we need to weaken the First Order before I am comfortable risking you against Kylo Ren again."

Rey looks at Poe as he mentions Kylo and a deeper form of understanding washes over her. Poe is afraid of repeating Leia's mistake with Rey. Poe wants to give her as much time as possible before facing Kylo again. No one had talked much about Rey's injury in the year since it happened, everyone preferring to look forward instead of back in this war. But looking at Poe now, she realizes how much it must have scared him to see her so damaged.

Rey doesn't know what to say, she stands still, but her rigid stance softens the longer she thinks about Poe's concern. Poe closes the distance between them by dodging around a few more droids. He pulls something out of his pocket and presents it to her.

At first, Rey is too distracted by her new revelation of Poe's thought process to notice, but then she looks down to the flashing blue eye of the cloaked binary beacon bracelet she had worn all those years ago to connect her to Leia while she was on Achc-To.

Rey audibly gasps when she sees it, "I thought these were lost years ago."

"Not lost, just not needed. Until now."

Poe holds out the bracelet and Rey slips her freckled hand through it. He tightens it around her tiny wrist, and as he does, Rey sees its twin already around Poe's arm.

Poe presses the center of both beacons, causing the irises of both to flash blue and purple, syncing them to each other.

Poe raises his hands to rest on Rey's shoulders, "As long as we are in this galaxy, you aren't alone. We will always come back for you."

He pulls Rey into a tight hug, and she swells with happiness for a moment, but then, the hug is gone. The thought that this may be their final hug, and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it, flashes in her mind.

She shoves the thought down and brings her own hands up to straighten Poe's jumpsuit collar, before teasing, "Ready, flyboy?"

"Always," that rugged smile parades across his face and they all, Poe, Rey, and the commissioned droids, make their way out and towards the launch bay.

Rey sees all of them off, hugs Finn, Rose, and BB-8, and says her temporary goodbyes. "It's just for a few weeks." "We will be back before you know it." She is still raw from being excluded, and her blood feels coppery with jealousy when she watches the four of them board the shuttle, but she needed to make sure she saw them. War is no place for bitterness.

* * *

Three days after they leave, deep in the puzzlement of working on a particularly damaged gyroscopic stabilizer, Rey gets another visitor.

"What are you doing?" the voice fills the empty room, extinguishing any small mechanical whirs or beeps the remaining droids, mostly of the maintenance and protocol variety, were emitting.

"Fixing droids" her voice is detached, focused. She doesn't look up from her work, but she knows who it is by his voice.

"Why? They're just protocol droids. They have no tactical advantage, unless you intend to talk the First Order to death." His voice is full of sarcasm, but at least it is full.

"I don't know, tell that to the Death Star" she scoffs back.

He lets out a short, indignant laugh. Rey swirls around to look at Kylo Ren and scrunches up her face in a dubious smile. He notices grease streaks haphazardly framing her face and smiles back, the expression looking sinister and foreign on his skin.

"Did you just…?" Rey's disbelief is palpable.

"No, you're imagining things." Kylo's face straightens out as he says it.

She turns back around and snaps out of it. Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order stands behind her in the supply room of the Millenium _Falcon_ . Despite their last meeting, she should not be this at ease with that fact. She straightens her body and remembers they are enemies, remembers how close they have both come to slaughtering one another.

"To what do I owe this visit, _Supreme Leader_?" Rey's voice is harsh and pushes down the levity they had just been playing with.

"Payback, mostly, for the last time," Kylo wants to keep teasing, keep with their verbal jibes, but he knows from her shifting body language it's a losing game.

"I see." Rey responds and all semblance of comfort between them evaporates.

An awkward air permeates. Rey's heart picks up with nerves befitting for the situation. She tries to go on with her work and ignore the interloper. She turns toward Kylo and walks to the shelf he is leaning against, wanting to appear as unconcerned as possible. She reaches up to the top shelf to grab a M820 lubricant container. She realizes too late that she had not bothered to change out of her sleeping clothes today, as it was just her, Chewie and the droids now. Her top inches up her torso, revealing the jagged sliver of a scar he had left there a year earlier.

His eyes are drawn immediately to it and she quickly grabs the container and shoves her top down once she notices his gaze on her stomach.

"It looks like mine, a little" his hands come up to run his fingers across the scar bisecting his face she left him with three years ago. He takes a step toward her, closing the distance between them until they are inches apart. She doesn't flinch like she once did. She looks up at him and notices he is covered in a thin layer of sweat. She can smell him, like the crisp ocean salt water on Batuu. When he speaks again, his register is deeper than she has ever heard it, "We've both marked each other now."

Her stomach swells uncomfortably, as if she had swallowed a weight. It inches down further and further, becoming a pressure in her pelvis. When she recognizes the feeling he is stirring in her, she moves past him back to the droid, barely missing sliding against him. She moves the droid a little further away to a station in the far corner of the room, wanting to put as much distance between them as possible.

Kylo's voice is full of ego when he speaks next, "Just another thing in common I guess. We can add it to the pile of what we share. Or will share."

Rey flashes hot. She reaches for her saberstaff but realizes it's not there, it's back in her bunk, still on her hilt. His words are repugnant, but more than that, she is repulsed by whatever feeling he was kindling in her. In her rage, she snarls her words, using them as her weapon instead, "Don't pretend you know me. You don't know me. We've spent a grand total of a few hours together, and the majority of it we have been trying to kill each other. So don't stand there and say we share ANYTHING in common. We don't."

"I know you. I know you better than anyone else in this galaxy, just as you know me. I have seen inside your head. I have seen your future and your past. I have seen you."

"No. Don't delude yourself, Kylo Ren. I know what it feels like to belong to people now. I know what it feels like to really know someone else now. This isn't that."

"Do you really think that they can ever understand you, those Rebels you were thrown together with? Do you really think they will ever know what you are? What you have to grapple with every day just by being born with what we have?"

"They're my friends, Kylo. Do you understand what that means? Or are you so far from being human now that you've forgotten?"

A silence covers them and the hum from the engines buzzes. She hates that she feels a twinge of regret for that sting. She shouldn't. Her narrowed eyes break from his and she turns back to the droids and resumes stripping wires. Kylo awkwardly shifts behind her as if to leave, and her heart lunges for a moment, not wanting the conversation to end with that. She takes a move out of his playbook and asks him a question she already knows the answer to in order to keep him there.

"Do you know the droids by the callsigns C-3PO and R2-D2?" Rey looks to their prone shells in the corner, she has yet to turn them back on after their last cleaning. Poe had left them with her, Threepio being of use when it came to translating her sacred Jedi texts. She doesn't know why she asks Kylo this particular questions, but she knows he is the only other person, perhaps in the galaxy, that might have answers for her. And now that she has an open line she doesn't want to waste it, even if it was not the most opportune moment.

Kylo shrugs, his voice settles, "You know I do."

"Tell me" Rey demands.

Kylo sighs, knowing this game, but there is a pang of excitement to his voice at the realization that Rey is now in charge of the conversation, willingly talking to him after striking out, "Threepio was General Organa's droid from before I was born. He's fucking annoying but he taught me most of the languages I know. He serves his purpose. R2 was Skywalker's, used mostly for navigation and mechanical work."

"Okay." She tries to find her next words carefully, looking off to her right, "Okay, is there anything else about them that you know?"

"Yes, they helped blow up the Death Star and win the Galactic Civil War." He answers her in the most monotone voice he can muster and her lips curl in as if that is not quite what she meant. Kylo grows frustrated, "What are you getting at?"

"I've been working with the droids lately, and those, C-3PO and R2-D2, their codes are so complex, more complex than any other droids I have ever seen. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"They're useless, they belonged to Bail Organa first, they were just palace droids."

"Is that what you think?"

"Gods, just say what you want to say," Kylo could play this game forever with Rey, but he is too intrigued now, he just wants her to spit it out.

Rey looks back to her work as she talks, "They're like mirror images of each other. R2 has some of the most intricate learned coding I have ever seen. He is very old but he has never been wiped. Threepio is the opposite. His code has been erased and written over countless times. When I went in for a check up on Threepio, I found ghosts of old protocols. They didn't have the technology before to see the overwritten data, but now we do. I was able to access different safe mode points in his history."

"What made you do that?" Kylo couldn't understand why, in the middle of a war, Rey would be fiddling with protocol droids.

"It was just so convoluted in there. There was so much going on. I felt like, I don't know, that he had been manipulated so many times and had lost who he was so many times, I just wanted to give him some peace." Rey turns to meet Kylo's eyes when she says this, the parallels between Threepio and Ren not lost on her.

"That's an irrational thing to say. He's a machine."

Rey rolls her eyes, "Okay, but listen. Most of the access points were nothing, a few of them he would respond in High Galactic or Huttese to, I even got one where he was speaking Olys Corellisi." Kylo's face turned at the mention of that very dead language. "I just figured they were latent programming that people had overwritten when those forms of communication faded. But, when I got to the save point dated 22 BBY, something...something different happened."

Kylo shifts his attention and gaze fully on Rey. Rey notices the shift.

"Does that year mean something to you?" she asks, turning her body so that she could face him more clearly.

"Keep talking. What happened on that save point?" his voice is hiding something, but she obeys.

"He, he didn't recognize me. He started to call me...Senator Amidala...and complain that I had started to wear my hair differently." Rey shifts her weight and crosses her arms.

Kylo leans fully back against the wall when Rey says that name, but she doesn't hear anything through the bond and oh, she is listening, so she continues.

"I looked her up on a datapad, but there's not much information. Not even a picture," Rey grabs the tablet next to her and tries to hand Kylo the datapad, to show him, but also to test the boundaries of this bond. He doesn't take it. She sighs and sets it on a container next to him. "She was one of the founders of the Rebel Alliance. She was a Queen on Naboo before becoming a Senator. But that's it. Well, I mean, that's all I could find. She seemed extraordinary, but I can't find anything on what happened to her. Do you know anything? I know you have studied that time period extensively."

"I know the name." He shifts uncomfortably and takes his eyes off Rey as he says it, but again, the bond is quiet. This makes Rey suspicious.

"What are you not saying?" she steps closer to him, but still keeps quite a distance between them. She notices his sweat beading and streaking his face, and wonders where he must be on his side of the bond.

"What are _you_ not saying?" he poses in return.

Rey shifts her weight to other leg, and looks over to Threepio's darkened eyes in the corner. She is so unsure of if she should tell Kylo the next part. It wasn't part of her plan, but none of this was. She closes her eyes as she talks, as if that wouldn't make her decision to tell him real, as if she can just pretend to be telling the air. "His internal functions clogged up after that, almost like a coded self-destruct. I think he knew what was about to happen," she rubs her eyes with her palms as she speaks, wiping away her consternation, "because there was a change in his eyes, almost like his consciousness reawoke. He grabbed me and started to repeat random numbers over and over again. Then he rebooted to his last known save. I checked, but I couldn't find any former save points after that."

"It was probably just binary," Kylo is dismissive.

"No, I know binary," Rey is determined.

"Of course you do," he means to sound flippant, but it comes out more reverential.

"It would have been easier if it were binary, but this was something else" she paused, not knowing how much she should give away, not knowing how much she should trust this man after very few positive interactions. She looks up and his eyes are so soft, so willing. She sees the man who told her about the sun-dew fields on Chandrila. The words are out of her mouth before she realizes:

"He gave me coordinates."


	9. Chapter 9

Kylo is taken aback at this trust Rey has put into him. He wasn't expecting her to be so open. Their conversations always vacillated wildly between extremes, but the pendulum had never swung this far in exposing her vulnerability before.

He tests the trust, "What were they? What were the coordinates?"

Rey cocks her head sideways, and her eyes narrow, as if unable to believe how brazen his line of questioning is, "Why would I ever tell you that? The last time we were in the same physical space you lacerated my insides. **"**

"I had no intention of ever hurting you," he realizes it is the wrong thing to say as it leaves his mouth, he realizes how wrong everything he is saying is turning out to be.

"You told me you were going to destroy me. You told Luke you were going to destroy me. How can you say you never meant to hurt me?" Rey's voice is strong and edging on outrage.

Something like shame clouds Kylo's face. Something in Rey bursts, and rage bubbles to the surface. She is done playing their games.

"What is that?" her voice jumps with contempt as she gestures towards his face, "What is this? You threaten me and yet you look at me like that when I push back. You've sworn your life to being my enemy, made a conscious choice to go against me more than once, and yet you're here, talking to me as if there isn't this war between us. Is confusing me part of your thirst for power? Is making me totally incapable of reading you, when I can literally hear your thoughts, some sort of sadistic game that you can't stop playing with me?" Her voice reaches a fever pitch until she is almost yelling before she breathes out, pausing in her ire, her head falling listlessly to its side, tired from the tirade. Her voice is soft when she speaks again, her gaze focused on the floor, not Kylo, "I thought for one moment years ago that you were the only thing that made sense in this galaxy. Now you're the one thing that confuses me most." She closes her eyes and hopes that when she opens them he will be gone.

Instead, she hears a demand.

"Look at me."

"No."

"Look at me, please," his desperation catches in her, it always does.

Rey looks up at him through blurry eyes, his figure obscured by her rising tears, her voice betraying her, "You don't understand how hard it is to look at you, to see you. You're covered in these pinpricks of light and they're so bright, so concentrated, trying to escape through the cracks of whatever you've encased yourself in."

Kylo's sudden rage bursts through the room and he shouts back at her, "I have to live this! I have to live every moment feeling as if I am about to be torn apart." The familiar boom of his voice startles Rey for a moment, but she doesn't stir. It had been so long since she heard him scream this way, "I have to endure this constant struggle within me, and then there's you." His voice disarms itself as he says the last word, as he addresses Rey directly, "You, still willing to look at me even if it hurts. You're the only one who has been ever willing to do that. The rest just sent me away. You, still so sure something is in me, that I don't think exists anymore. You're the only person left in the Galaxy who still sees that. I killed the rest of them."

His words should frighten her, coming out like a threat, but Rey takes a step forward, "Kylo…"

He looks away from her, as if looking at her say that name to him is too much, "You, with all your light, who still managed to bleed a kyber crystal. How did you do that? I am not the confusing one. You are the enigma, the outlier. You bewilder me. I am _consumed_ by you."

His words come out like an accusation and Rey breaks her gaze. A tear that had been welling in her, that she had been willing to go away, streams down her face. She lets it fall, focusing on the drop inching down her face instead of the unbearable tension that surrounds them.

He looks to her as her single tear falls, his voice unwavering, "I need you to close the bond again."

"What?" Rey's head jolts back at the sudden turn in the conversation, causing her tear to fall from her chin. No more come.

"I can't, I can't do it. I can't trust myself to do it completely" he fumbles with where to place his hands when he says this.

"What are you talking about?" Rey's mouth gapes in disbelief.

"I know you're going to the coordinates. When you're on the _Falcon_ it's hard to pinpoint your location, but at a fixed coordinate I will know where you are. I will follow you. I need you to close the bond so I can't."

"I haven't decided whether I'm going," Rey lies.

"Yes you have. Stop worrying about convincing the Wookie. He's devoted to you and always willing to break the rules a little. He's good at keeping secrets."

Rey's eyebrows knit together, trying and failing to read him. "Do you really lack that much self control that you can't stop yourself from killing me if you know where I am?"

"I think we both know you would end me first."

Rey shakes her head, scrunching her nose in defiance, "I've never wanted to destroy you."

"Too late. You already have."

With that, Kylo is gone. He leaves his words in the air and Rey with her fists clenched in reflex. Everything seems humid and damp in his wake, and it makes it hard for her to breathe.

She sits down, hard, on the cold ground, and the droids that had been so stilled in his presence start to shift slightly with curiosity at her reaction. She covers her eyes with her palms and presses them deep into the sockets. She can feel her eyes shake under the pressure. The afterimage his light had seared into her retina hangs until she can almost make him out, a full human being comprised entirely of light. When she releases, the room around her is swimming with phosphenes, the very fabric of space around her seems to be swaying.

She gathers herself. Kylo was right, she was going to the coordinates. As soon as Threepio had said them, an invisible string tightened in her, linking her to them. An understanding that this was the next step washed over her, and she knew it was the force that drew her, that gave her the coordinates, that beckoned her. The feeling that the coordinates held something she needed to see nestled deep inside her.

She had spent the years since Luke's passing still asking herself the same question: what was her place in all of this?

She thought she had known a few times. When she sat in that hut on Achc-To, she had been sure her part was to bring Ben back, but she couldn't. After, she thought it was to protect the people she loved with everything she had, but here she sat on the _Falcon_ while they were light years away, fighting without needing her.

All of her sureties had slowly been stripped from her and Luke was right, nothing had gone the way she thought it would. She was still just as unsure what her place in all this was, why she had been fated to save BB-8 as the sun set on her last full day on Jakku.

That moment had changed the entirety of her future and it all happened so quickly. Since then, her life had been full, there was no doubt, but with that fullness came an almost unbearable weight. She didn't know how much longer she could carry the burden of it all. On Jakku, she knew where her life would lead her. It was sad and it was small, but she knew.

Now she wasn't sure of anything.

And the one person who could maybe understand, who could maybe help her carry the weight, had just asked her to wall up their connection.

But maybe, maybe these coordinates would have some answers.

She acts quickly, not wanting to seem as if she wanted to keep something he had asked her to throw away. She pushes herself off the ground and walks in a trance to her bunk. She opens the drawer underneath the beds and takes out the Jedi texts. The page she needs is easy to find, earmarked from years prior. It takes her longer than she wants to admit to calm herself after that encounter, but eventually, the pulse of the force syncs with her own and she slips into the plane.

Kylo stands right next to her, but she can only see his broad back. He's facing resolutely away from her. Static swirls around them, but he is as clear as he had been in the storage room dozens of minutes before. She looks at his still figure for a moment too long before concentrating on shutting him out. As she rebuilds the bond, his silhouette starts to wave at the edges of her peripheral vision, morphing from a crisp outline to something more amorphous. The fibers which hold them together start to stretch unnaturally, pushing what was Kylo further and further from Rey. The force stutters and jerks, fighting Rey back, but she persists. She thinks she sees the figure turn and reach out at the very last moment, but it could also be nothing, everything is undulating so madly. Eventually, it was like it had been before the forest, before he had marked her. He is a mass in the distance that barely registers. She slowly comes out of it and finds herself back on her bunk, looking at the wall in front of her. Her eyes shift in and out of focus, and she can only feel numbness rising in her.

* * *

Kylo was right about another thing, too; Chewie was easy to convince. Almost before she was done explaining it to him, he was up and taking his long strides to the holomap.

Chewie pulled up the map in the common room, igniting a microcosm around them. He walked through it, almost to the edge, before finding the speck of her coordinates. A small, excited roar escaped him as he pointed to it.

It was deep in the Outer Rim Territories, and there was not a safe route set into the ship's paralight system yet, so Rey and Chewie had to manually chart and punch in variants to the system. They spent a few hours mulling over which path might be the safest route. At any time she could have changed her mind, could have told Chewie she wanted to stay instead, but she didn't.

Before they leave, Rey discharges a small radio message into space for Finn, Rose, and Poe, in the highly unlikely event that they make it back before she does. In it, she only says, "I'm safe. I will be back soon," and she hopes this will be enough to stop them from wasting their fuel reserves on her.

Chewie enters in the route as Rey straps herself in. The familiar streak of stars extends in front of them and their bodies lean back into their seats.

A minute passes before the ship moans and their bodies heave towards the window of the _Falcon,_ which is now filled almost completely by perfect red orb.

As the planet grows closer, Rey's gut grows heavier, and darkness rises like a tide in her. When they enter the atmosphere, she is swimming in it. There is no fear in her. Instead, she is reminded of dreams she would have of the ocean as a child, before she even knew what an ocean was. In the dream, she would swim too far out in the dark sea, and all the light from the shore would fade to almost nothingness, but she would still keep going, propelled by something unknown. She would keep going until she was enveloped in utter darkness, until everything around her was black. It was then that the water beneath her would begin to glow with her movements, bioluminesce rising from her wading hands and legs.

Luke's voice from Achc-To ripples through her head _You went straight for it. You didn't even try to resist._ It had been the same in the caves that had called to her when she needed to rebuild her saber. But she dove head first, because she knew that even in the darkest of places, she could make light.

The _Falcon_ creaks as it lands, its metal expanding in retaliation to the heat outside. Large swaths of bubbling lava surround the landing platform, crashing like waves against the rocks.

As she powers down the _Falcon_ , the familiar blue lights of its interior are devoured by the red glow of the planet. Rey feels her skin and eyes darken against the dim outside. Chewie's voice surges with reluctance against this hellish scene. Rey looks at him with complete confidence in her decision, and he quiets.

Rey pushes herself up, not quite sure where the force needs her to be yet. She walks back to the storage room, her maintenance shop, and turns to the droids in the corner. She had left them off for long enough. She switches C-3PO back on first.

"Oh, Master Rey, how good to see you again."

Rey smiles at him, glad to hear he recognizes her again and is not calling her Senator Amidala any longer.

She turns to R2 next and reaches behind him to find his power switch. He powers on with a few beeps and she puts her hands on either side of his body to steady herself to stand. Before she can engage her legs to lift herself up, R2's beeps turn into panicked mechanical screams and Rey's body reactively tightens as he runs through her, pushing her to the ground.

"R2!" Rey and Threepio scream at the same time, as the tiny droid careens towards the cockpit.

Threepio helps Rey to her feet before waddling behind her as she runs after the errant droid. R2 and Chewie have already begun a yelling match when Rey catches up.

Rey only can make out a few beeps between the Wookie's yelling and R2's panic, "What do you mean we have to leave?"

R2 starts moving wildly, turning his body back and forth between Rey and Chewie while showering them with endless cascading beeps.

Rey kneels down to R2's level, trying to calm the frantic droid, "R2, it's okay. I feel the danger too. I won't let anything happen to you, to any of you."

He calms, but continues beeping, trying to get her to understand this is different.

Rey straightens. She remembers her initial impression of R2 as secretive. She wonders what he is not saying.

"R2, I promise, we've made it through so much more than Mustafar."

R2's defeated whistle rings out at the name again, _Mustafar._


	10. Chapter 10

As Rey lets the bay door of the _Falcon_ down, sulfur from the planet below accosts her. The heat from the lava fields instantly dries out her eyes, and the sting brings her back to Jakku for a moment, before she realizes that this planet feels more antagonistic than Jakku ever did. Even though Jakku had effectively imprisoned her, Mustafar still feels darker and more spiteful.

Her backwards nostalgia is broken with Chewie's whining protest.

"Really? It's hot?" Rey playfully chides at the Wookie's complaint.

Chewie muffles something about that being easy to say when she has such fine fur, but continues on with her anyway.

They stand on the platform, transfixed for a moment at the lava juxtaposing itself against the permeating blackness. A sense of certainty overtakes her. The cool light still streaming out from the _Falcon_ 's bay door is dimmed by the appearance of the two droids. Rey looks to them briefly, not wanting to see any perceived disapproval from them, because she knows she has to go, has to venture out into this place.

Rey adjusts her bag and reaches out to give Chewie a hug.

"Take care of them. I should only take a few days," she nods her heads towards the droids standing quietly above them.

Chewie breaks the hug and takes her hand. When they separate, she has a small comlink tucked into her palm, discreetly handed to her by the Wookie.

She smiles weakly, knowing that R2's meltdown must have scared him. She gives him a final pat on the shoulder before turning to the dark landforms that are raised up out of the lava behind her.

"Wait, Master Rey!" Threepio moves down the ramp as quickly as his rigid body allows. He gets to the end of the ramp before realizing R2 has not followed him, like he usually does. Threepio looks back. For once, he says nothing, just bows his head slightly at the little droid and continues on his way.

Threepio turns his attention back towards Rey, "Oh, Master Rey, do you have to go? Can't you wait for the others to get back?"

Rey smiles at Threepio and wonders if he will ever know he was the catalyst, the reason, for all of this.

"I appreciate your concern, Threepio, but I will be fine. I will be back before you know it." She wraps her arms around his stiff body and he lets out a small, "oh" before bending his elbows to try to embrace her back.

She looks briefly to R2 from over Threepio's shoulder, but as she does he turns away from her. Her lips curl into a small frown.

She waves back to them as she begins her trek towards the blackened landforms to the east.

Threepio and Chewie wave back, watching her struggling slightly, only slightly, with the weight of her bag.

When she is almost disappeared into the ether, Threepio and Chewie start to reboard the _Falcon_ , passing R2's still body as they do.

"Well, are you coming then?" Threepio motions to R2.

R2 looks to Threepio, then back to the spot in the distance that is Rey, then back to Threepio. In an instant R2 speeds down the _Falcon_ 's ramp towards Rey, not able to leave her alone on this harsh planet.

"R2!" Threepio screams and lunges for him, but Chewie holds him back, "Oh! He's going to get himself melted!"

R2 darts through the landscape at top speed until he catches up to Rey, almost running into her when he does. The fear and anxiety she had shoved down when she said her goodbyes is now clearly showing on her face, but when she sees R2, her face lights up. She kneels down and embraces him, tightly.

When she stands back up, she readjusts herself and looks down at the brave little droid.

"Ready?"

R2 beeps in affirmation.

* * *

They walk for what seems like hours, Rey lost in the newness of it all, R2 resolutely scanning for impending doom. Every once in a while, Rey stops to marvel at the surroundings, at the smooth terraces of igneous rock impossibly cool beneath her feet. R2 runs smack into her a few times, not paying attention when she stops, and Rey always giggles at his stout, protective focus.

Rey has never seen anything like Mustafar. Even though she is much more well traveled than she once was, Mustafar is still an anomaly. They climb upwards for a long time, traversing the hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated layers of lava flow. Once they get high enough, a large clearing spreads out in front of them. It is almost like they can see the entirety of the planet on this one flat plain. Rey is transfixed by the ground, covered in nothing but thick, cooled magma, the ripples of which fold themselves over every surface. The swirls are entrancing to her, drawing her in with their fluidity. She walks with her head down, studying them, enjoying their curves. Without her noticing, the air around her grows cooler, and when she looks up, a wall of blackness stands in front of her.

Rey looks up to see jagged rocks jutting far up into the red sky. Her head automatically points up, looking towards the scraggy peaks. There was no way. A moment ago these mountains hadn't been there. A moment ago she was in a cooling lava field. She wondered if she had just lost track of time, but she had never lost time before, not even in her most concentrated moments. She always had to be alert. But here she was with a whole mountain range in front of her that she had not noticed. She looks back to R2, but he is already running the length of the mountains, seemingly surprised too.

Rey knows she should follow R2 as he gets further away, but can't help but look back up a the mountains again. The peaks are so sinister against the angry sky. They are almost impossibly pointy. They almost look intelligently made.

R2's whistle breaks her musing. He's found something.

Rey hikes up her bag and follows R2. He is staring seemingly right into the solid cliff face and Rey wonders what he sees. It is not until she is directly next to him that she sees it too.

"This has to be some sort of optical illusion, all of this. Right?" Rey looks down to R2 and he looks back up at her, but doesn't make a sound.

In front of them, the matte obsidian rock of the cliff gives way to glistening black glass which carves itself into a deep cave, stretching impossibly in front of them. Stalactites hang from the ceiling, mirrored in onyx. Rey steps three paces to her left and it disappears. She tries the same to the right, and it fades as well. The cave is only visible if you are standing directly in front of it.

Unsure, she sits at the mouth of the cave, looking deep into the abyss in front of her. She takes out her water bottle and takes a sip before deciding her next move. She begins calculating. There is no way she can cross over or around these sudden formations.

She tries to interface with the force for guidance, but finds it impossible. The force here has swung too far to one side, and it is too crowded with shadow to allow Rey in.

The caves stand in front of her, like the mirror image of the caves she once ventured into to craft her saber.

The caves stand in front of her, like a dare.

She decides to take it. She stands up and heads in, breaking the precipice of the cliff's face. R2 beeps disbelievingly, hoping to stop her, but she continues in. His beeps turn to annoyance and he rolls in to follow her.

As they advance, the cave starts to dwindle, getting smaller and smaller as they get deeper in. She begins to worry R2 will not fit as she has to squat down and waddle awkwardly on the balls of her feet to clear the narrow ceiling. She is about to turn back when R2's spotlight settles on a small opening just up and to the left of them. Curiosity gets the best of her and she slips through it.

R2 whistles deeply as she disappears, but just as quickly, her head reappears out of the hole.

"R2, you have to see this."

He squeezes in just barely and she helps him down into the room. He is ridiculously heavy, but helps a bit by anchoring himself.

When they climb down to the surface level, they both marvel at the room around them. Everything is smooth and covered in black crystal. The walls expand geometrically, forming an impossibly sided polygon around them. Everything is angles and they can see their reflection in each surface. The ceiling is domed and everything shines in chromed black. Even the sand beneath their feet is sparkling ebony.

Rey moves away and starts to run her hands around everything, except for the sand, she is still adverse to sand, even if it is beautiful and shiny. As she runs her hands against the smooth black glass of the walls, R2's interface scrambles behind her, making her jump. She looks back at him, at all his lights blinking and his beeps coming out jumbled and knows something is wrong. She runs back to him, throws her heavy bag to the floor and puts her hands on either side of his convex face.

"R2! R2 what is wrong?!"

She gasps in, trying to figure out what this could be, maybe the heat of it all was too much? It was oppressive, more oppressive than she had realized in her excitement. She pops his chest plate open to check his exhaust readings and internal core temperature, but everything reads normal.

The static and crumbling do not stop. It is as if someone is interfering with his communications systems. She finds his major comms system and detaches it slightly, just to allow herself some time to think about how to fix him. R2 goes quiet, before his holoprojector starts playing, the blue light piercing Rey's chest. She doesn't realize what is happening at first and looks down to the image as it splays across her body. She snaps out of it and moves, quickly, allowing the image to form on the ground about 3 feet in front of them.

"Leia," she breathes when her eyes adjust to the lighted form.

She recognizes this form of Leia, it was the last form Rey ever saw of her, tucked into her bed in the makeshift infirmary on the _Falcon_ . She had not laid eyes on her General in a full year, and her lungs immediately burn with the memories.

When the image of Leia speaks, her voice is so sad, more sad than Rey had ever heard it when Leia lived.

"This is probably a fool's errand, but I need to try. I never got to tell you the truth about where you come from. Snoke got to you before I could. And now, I'm out of time. There is still so much you don't know about your family, about the Skywalkers, about Vader. The answers to everything lie on Mustafar. Please, for you sake, and hers , go there. Figure out who you are."

The holovid scratches and jumps, but not before Rey can make out Leia's last words, "I love you Ben. I never stopped loving you."

Rey's body stiffens and she starts to shake, trying to process all the information she has just been given. The message loops as she turns back to R2, in a state of shocked disbelief.

Her head swims with too many thoughts at once: there was no way this was real, this was the past she was looking at, that was Leia almost a year ago on her deathbed on the _Falcon_ , Leia had sent this message to him when the droids said their goodbyes to her. Everything starts to spin as she pieces it all together. Her brain files quickly through everything, and she puts her hand on R2's face to steady herself.

 _Mustafar_ , had she said _Mustafar_? She shakes her head, no, and R2's head moves slightly in her direction as her eyes well. He cuts the transmission.

Just as suddenly as the transmission is cut, a deep booming sound erupts from all around her, " _Are you actually here_?" The voice echoes off every surface.

Everything in Rey stops for a moment of pure terror. Goosebumps prickle her skin and the hair on her arms stands straight up, bracing with some long extinct instinct to scare off predators. Rey spins around, the blades of her saberstaff already ignited, ready to face what she already knew was standing behind her.

A dozen Kylo Ren's stare back at her from every angle of the room, his reflection shattering into the glass walls of the cave, unfolding as a veritable fun house before her. Her mind registers it as a trick, like the ones the force played on her when she forged her saber. She skims the mirror images, waiting for the joke to play itself out. Instead, her eyes meet his, his real ones, and her heart stops.

She holds her saberstaff up defensively, creating a barrier between them. Neither of them move, for a moment, then another.

Recognition of something snaps in her head and she bares her teeth. This wasn't a trick; this was a trap.

"How did you do this? How did you infect Threepio with those coordinates?" Rey's words come out like bullets from behind her clenched teeth.

"I didn't do this," Kylo shakes his head slightly, looking deeply at Rey.

"You're lying." Rey doesn't yell, her anger is past yelling, but her voice pierces anyways.

He takes a deep breath before talking again, "Search your feelings. You know what the truth is..."

"Stop talking."

"...something wanted us here together."

Rey screams and lunges for him. She reaches him, but he ducks, and her saber sinks into the obsidian wall, melting it slightly, rebirthing it into lava.

She grunts as she pulls it from the wall.

"FIGHT ME!" She screams at him and he continues to flee, bouncing off the corners of the room away from her wailing saber.

He says nothing back, instead focusing on deflecting and dodging, his cowl blending in perfectly with the walls behind him. There is no time for the theatrics of her saber, for twirling or cycling through forms, she is all forward motion. Her eyes are all rage, and Kylo knows this isn't like before. She is aiming to kill.

He instinctively tries to reach out to her through the bond to calm her, but remembers that he had asked her to close it. She feels the failed tug and grows even more incensed. He dodges another blow. Growing more panicked, he tries another tactic, reaching out to gently force stun her, but her body cuts through his powers. He cycles quickly through his arsenal, his hand outstretched towards her charging body, but finds that nothing works here, nothing is stopping her in her frenzy.

He rolls away from another attack and sees her face is nothing but a scowl. He manages to get across the room from her as she again dislodges her saber from deep inside the wall that had just been behind him.

"I'm not going to fight you," his words come out between deep breaths, the damp air in the cave making it hard to catch his breath.

She turns, her buns loosened around her face and looks into his eyes.

"Then die," every bit of compassion is drained from her voice. Rey was sure he had lied, had tricked her, had made her believe this was the answer, all to get her here. Anger courses through her, the darkness of the planet infects her, extinguishing her light.

She runs full speed at him as he is pinned against the corner of the hard glass behind him. She sees the perfect reflection of her twin sabers in the glint behind and all around him. The scream that leaves her is deep and guttural and savage. All her clouded emotions pour out of this one sound as she angles her saber above her like a javelin. She charges him, the red of her saber lined up perfectly with his heart. She expects his saber to rise up to meet hers at any second but it doesn't. She is too close to stop now and he still isn't defending himself.

He sees the saber but doesn't move, knowing that being killed this way, by her, is infinitely better than any other divergent realities he may face. He can't fight her anymore, he can't risk raising his blade to her even in pure defense. His mind strays back to the drops of her blood in the snow, the smell of her burning flesh in the night's air. He can't risk hurting her like that again.

Seeing her running towards him like this fills him with a sense of morbid wonder. It had always been her. As her blade careens closer to him, he doesn't flinch, doesn't take his eyes off hers. If she needs this, to kill him to feel whole, he would be a willing sacrifice. He realizes he would do anything for her, even this. In what may be his final moments, his mind skitters back to this father, briefly, recognizing that Han had given him this same gift.

And then, it's over. He never raises his weapon and it's over. She buries her blade into him, her hilt digs deep into his chest. Her eyes are wide, so wide, as she stands inches from him, the smell of his burnt flesh rising. His eyes too, bear into her, with surprise, with the end of something. The blue end of her saber sticks out from Kylo's chest, but the red is disappeared against his body.

Her breath picks up in stuttering inhales and a tear rolls down her cheek as she realizes what she has done, what she had almost done. At the last second, she had flipped her red saber off before it plunged into his chest. The residual heat from it had scorched Kylo's skin, leaving a perfect circle right above his heart. She flicks the switch which retracts her blue saber into its handle and drops the weapon to the ground, its contact with the glass below reverberating loudly, but all she can hear is the sound of Kylo's breathing. The beautiful sound of his life, his continued life despite her impulsive recklessness with him, fills her with something indescribable.

Kylo looks down and realizes what she had done, realizes she hadn't pierced him, and breathes in sharply. In the second of this realization, her lips are on his. This surprises him even more than when he thought she had killed him the moment before. His eyes widen and he looks at her face centimeters away from his, her eyes shut tightly, tears still streaming through the cracks. He is dumbfounded, not kissing back, but at the touch of her hands on his chin, he breaks, and pushes off the wall, grabbing the back of her head and her lower back and pulling her deeply into his body.

He knows exactly how he wants to touch her, he had been playing this over and over in his guilty mind for the last three years. He had shoved this exact moment down in himself, minimized it into near nothingness inside him, knowing Rey, knowing she would never allow it to be real. He had tried not look at it for the last three years, but it had seeped into his being, bled into his dreams. The thought that he may wake up from this soon shoots through him and he presses even further into her.

Her chest wells with surprise at Kylo's fervor, causing her breasts to press themselves tightly against his body. Their breathing hardens as they feel each other this close for the first time, as the desperation of this moment, their lips on each other, rises. He lifts her body flush with his so he doesn't have to keep slouching to find her, and she is off the ground, off the sand. Her hands find his hair and run through it, tugging the back of it lightly as his tongue runs across hers. She wraps her legs around his waist and his hands find her backside, not wanting her to slip away ever again.

The force ignites in this dark place and runs through them, wanting them closer, impossibly close. It is too much, and they break the kiss for air. Her face is slightly above his as they rest their foreheads together and stare into each other's eyes, breathing heavy. Her eyes are hooded, almost tired, but his are full of surprise and latent longing. His eyes dart back and forth between hers, not believing this moment is real, still thinking he will wake up again like he always does after seeing her like this.

Just as quickly as this had started, it ends. A menacing sound from across the room causes them both to break instantly. She uses his body as leverage to flip backwards away from him towards her saber on the ground. Kylo straightens from their embrace, his saber hissing immediately at the intrusion. When she lands, she is crouched, one leg out, bracing the ground as she grabs and reignites her own weapon, still warm from her one sided battle. Neither of their breathing steadies. They stand next to each other, ready to fight on the same side again.

Around them, the funhouse of mirrors ignites in unearthly blue static. Two figures blip into existence in the center of the room. Children. Rey lets out a faint, pained "no", remembering the vision from the forest. But this felt different than their visions. This was something else. She slowly wills herself to look at the children's faces and realizes that neither of them is the child she saw in the forest. When Kylo makes the same realization, his stomach drops a bit in disappointment. Children, but not theirs. They both recall their blades at the same time.

No, these children are different, Rey thought. In front of them sat a young boy, sitting on something unseen, with a slightly older girl standing in front of him. Her dark hair was braided like a halo around her head. She is familiar to Rey, but Rey knows she has never seen her before. _If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people_ , Maz's voice rings in her head as she examines the girl further. She is young, perhaps 13 or 14, but she feels older, more worldly, endlessly mature.

As Rey focuses on the girl, Kylo looks to the small boy with sandy hair. Confusion sets in. Why are they being shown these children? He has never seen either of them before.

The children both move awkwardly, as if waiting for someone to say something. Rey begins to circle them, but the gaze of the children never acknowledges the presence of Rey or Kylo. Slowly, the realization that these children cannot see them back seeps into their collective consciousness.

"Are you an angel?" the small boy's sudden voice breaks their concentration.

"What?" the girl scratches in, opposite the boy. A smile spreads across the girl's face and both Rey and Kylo feel as if they have seen that smile before.

"An angel," the boy continues, "I heard the deep space pilots talk about them. They're the most beautiful creatures in the Universe. They live on the moons of Iego, I think."

Rey continues circling, her head tilted in deep puzzlement , but Kylo stands still, unmoving from his original spot.

"You're a funny little boy. How do you know so much?" the girl steps in closer.

"I listen to all the traders and star pilots who come around here. I'm a pilot, you know. And someday, I'm gonna fly away from this place."

"You're a pilot?"

"Mhm. All my life."

Rey starts to cycle through the possible reasons for this scene unfolding in front of her, the possible identities of these two children. She doesn't understand how this is possible, this scene playing out like a memory in front of her. She comes up blank.

Across from her, Kylo figures it out. At his exact moment of realization he takes in a sharp breath and holds it.

"How long have you been here?" the young girl's face is so soft, so curious, as she looks to the little boy in front of her.

"Since I was very little. Three, I think. My mom and I were sold to Gardulla the Hutt, but she lost us betting on the pod races."

"You're a slave?" the girl's face contorts. Rey's face mirrors hers.

"I'm a person, and my name is Anakin," the young boy defiantly responds, and the room seems changed in the instant the sound waves hit the air.

Rey's hand shoots to her mouth and her eyes dart immediately to Kylo. He is already looking at her. Her shock is broken with the voice of the young girl.

"I'm sorry, I don't fully understand, this is a strange place to me."

Suddenly a phantom crash emits from the far corner of the room and all four of them turn towards it.

When Rey and Kylo turn back, the children are gone from between them. They stand looking at each other from opposite ends of the room.


	11. Chapter 11

They stand wide eyed across the room for too long, neither of them sure of how to proceed after the rapid succession of life altering events that had just taken place between them.

R2's breaks their staring contest by whimpering softly behind Rey. She closes her eyes and thanks every molecule in that little droid for giving her something to do besides bore holes into Kylo Ren. She turns around and finds him hiding behind her, leaning out inquisitively to look at Kylo, trembling at the sight of him. Rey is momentarily confused, and looks to Kylo, who averts his eyes. It rushes back; they know each other. They _knew_ each other. The memory of her vision of R2 before she met R2, standing in front of the burning temple, the burning children, floods her.

Rey kneels beside R2, her back to Kylo, and puts her hand on top of his metal body, trying to calm him. His shivering stops after a moment of her touch.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," she whispers to R2. Kylo hears.

From behind Rey, sand crunches as Kylo breaks and takes a step towards them. Rey's back straightens, but she doesn't turn. Instead, R2 whips around her, positioning himself between the two humans. He pops his chest plate open, wielding a small mechanical saw, which he hostilely points at Kylo. Rey stands up and turns around, unable to be surprised after what had transpired over the last twenty minutes.

Kylo looks to R2, then back to Rey, "Your savior." His voice is dripping in sarcasm, but he stays where he is.

"Does he need to be?" Rey's voice is even, but armed.

"I think I'm the one in need of protection," he motions to the burn still singeing at his clothes, right above his heart.

Rey exhales loudly and puts her hand quietly on R2. He whines before returning his saw into his toolkit.

"I see he's still well trained," Kylo looks menacingly down at the droid who backs up slightly into Rey.

"Stop, just stop, he has every right to be cautious around you." She stares daggers into Kylo, "I need you to cut the act for a few minutes so I can think."

Kylo looks as if he is about to talk again, but decides better of it at the last second, instead choosing to lean against the wall behind him, where he is framed by the cooling orange slashes Rey had made with her saber minutes before.

Rey rubs her eyes before running her hands through her disheveled hair. There are a thousand ways the next few minutes can go. She looks up at him, and he stares back at her coolly, but she can tell there are a thousand things happening in his mind as well.

"Let's just...let's just start from the beginning and work our way through it," Rey says, trying to be as diplomatic as possible.

As she utters her last word, the ground beneath them begins to rumble.

"Are you kidding me?! What now?!" Rey yells indignantly into the ether.

"Not again," Kylo says at the same time, but Rey still catches his words under her shouting. Her head whips immediately in his direction but he has already closed the short distance between them. He puts his large hands on her back and stomach and and pushes her powerfully forward with him. Rey instinctively whips her head back to call for R2, but he is on their heels already.

"Wait! The way out..."

As she says it, she looks back to the hole she and R2 had crawled through to get into this chamber, and sees that it has disappeared. In fact, the whole room around them was shifting into something else, the geometrical shapes folding in on themselves, forming new configurations.

"We have to go!" he tightens his grip around her, but causing a spike of anger in her at not being able to freely move. She spins out of his grasp and lunges back into the collapsing room.

"Rey!"

She slides to grab her bag. As she does, a stalactite falls inches from her thigh. Before it can teeter from its upright position, Kylo has her. He grabs her one handed by her waist and carries her like that back to the hallway, where R2 stands shaking his head back in forth in disbelief as he watches the destruction of the room they had all just been in.

The three of them squeeze through the hall into a different chamber, this one just as glittering in black as the last. If she were more aware, in less shock, she would have been kicking and screaming out of his grasp. But she allows him to carry her. He sets her down on the ground in the new room once the quaking stops and sits down next to her.

"You knew that was going to happen?" her words come out between deep gasps of air.

"It's been happening randomly over the last two days," he replies, looking around their new room like he would look at a traitor.

"You've been trapped down here for two days?"

Kylo catches his breath and nods. Rey examines him more closely, seeing the signs of it all over him. His hair is drenched in sweat and it hangs down in strands. His eyes are sunken, the dark circles around his eyes more apparent from the early stages of dehydration. She had missed all of it in her rage, had been so clouded in so many emotions she hadn't truly seen him yet.

"You were here when I saw you on the _Falcon_ then, you could have told me you were trapped," her voice is soft.

"And what would that have done? Trapped you too?"

"Wasn't that your plan all along?"

Kylo's eyes narrow, angry at the direction she is taking. He cocks his head, and Rey can feel his temper rising. She tests it to get the answers she needs.

"Your mother sent that transmission a year ago. Why are you only here now?" Kylo winces a bit as Rey says _your mother,_ but pacifies himself for a moment longer.

"I came as soon as I got the message, but, there was nothing here. I could feel nothing. I've come back a few more times since, just for a few days each time. Nothing ever happened, until this trip, until two days ago, when it connected me to you."

"So you tricked me to come here so you could get your answers?"

"I'm not the reason you are here! I didn't trick you. I didn't plant those coordinates, that was something else."

Rey knows. Her fear had clouded her before, but she knows he is telling the truth. She sits silently and lets it sink into her.

"I thought the coordinates would lead you somewhere else. I thought you would be far away from this," he looks again at the room as he says it.

"Where did you think they would take me?"

"Naboo."

"Naboo?" her eyebrow shoots up, unable to process where she had heard that planet's name before.

"The year you mentioned, 22 ABY."

"What about it?"

The room grumbles again, and the sand underneath them begins to vibrate. Kylo reaches for her again, but she knows this time, she has adjusted. She averts his grasp and instead shoots up to push a reeling R2 forward into the next hall. The shift seems to move more slowly this time and they are less panicked as they move into the next chamber.

"What IS this place?" Rey looks around after they safely settle in the next room, running her hands along the smooth, mirrored walls.

"I don't know, but I think it's funneling us deeper into it. It wasn't this active before you came."

Rey has a chance to think again, and she looks at Kylo. He notices and looks back.

"You don't have any supplies," she states matter-of-factly.

"No, I've been in this cave system before. It's never acted like this. I didn't think I needed any."

Rey takes her bag off and grabs her canteen, uncapping the lid and handing it out to him, "Drink."

"No, I'm not going to take what's yours."

"Okay. So the plan is to dehydrate yourself until you're too weak to move, after which I will be forced to carry you room to room?" She pauses to let it sink in before stretching the canteen out further, "Drink."

He stares at her, knowing she is right. He reaches out to take the bottle. As his grip tightens around it, hers slips off, careful not to touch his fingers. He notices how meticulous Rey is in the hand off.

"When did you last eat?"

Kylo stays silent, wiping the water from his chin, knowing that if he tells the truth, she will just offer more of the supplies she needs to him.

Rey rolls her eyes before taking out rations, stacked neatly on top of each other. Kylo is taken a back at her bag of tricks and reaches for it, causing Rey to shoot back a bit. He grabs the bag from her and rifles through it.

"Jakku made you paranoid," he says as he pushes through rations and medicine and rope on the surface of her bag.

"Jakku made me smart enough to know you don't venture out unprepared," she hands him a ration packet as he takes her tiny dig.

Kylo sits, exhausted, with food in one fist, water in the other, ravenously eating as Rey examines the room, looking for all the possible exit points. She circles the whole room, before returning to Kylo's side, sitting next to him. When she returns, his feast is already over and he tries to hand the canteen back to Rey.

"Finish it. You're already showing signs of dehydration," she waves him off.

"Rey…"

"Finish it, there's more."

The caves groan and both their legs tighten in anticipation, but the walls around them don't shift again.

"We should keep moving. If you're right, if it is trying to force us in deeper, we should do it on our own to avoid getting crushed by it," Rey reaches for her bag and repacks what Kylo had rifled through.

Rey's language is not lost on Kylo. Everytime she says _we_ his chest tightens a little, as if the string that links him to her grows tighter and more taut, bringing them a little closer each time.

Rey stands up and dusts the black sand off of her before loading her bag back on her back. She thinks briefly about extending her hand to help Kylo up, but decides against it, and instead stares at him awkwardly as he struggles through to stand in the sand.

Rey leads, followed by R2, still trying to act as a barrier between the two force wielders, with Kylo bringing up the back.

There is still so much Rey wants to know, and the longer they walk in silence, the more awkward the air between them grows. Her hand grazes her saber and she tries to keep her mind off what happened when she last used it. She tries to focus on anything but the way he had felt and tasted. She focuses on the heat, and all the questions swirling in her instead. She moves on to the next pressing subject, humored by the fact that a literal ghost boy-Vader was so far down on her list of priorities.

"Who was the girl?" Rey calls back from the front of the pack. Kylo would know. If that really was Vader, Kylo would know.

"Padme Amidala."

Rey stops in her tracks. "Oh," it comes out almost pained, as if someone had punched her in the stomach right before she said it, "She was so young."

"She was probably already Queen."

"She seemed it." Rey starts moving again, but stops almost immediately again, causing R2 to bunch up behind her, "She knew Darth...Anakin?" Rey corrects herself halfway through her question.

Kylo can't contain a stifled chortle, "Yes." It comes out almost in a fit.

Rey swivels around to look at Kylo, catching his eyes.

"What's funny about that?" her voice is honestly confused, with a hint of betrayal, as if she knows he is in on a secret she isn't.

Kylo remains silent.

Rey continues walking, this time talking to herself more than Kylo, "She knew Vader as a child." She says it like she has pieces of a puzzle but can't quite figure out how to fit them together. Saying it reminds her of something else, something she had never thought of before, "Vader was a child."

"That's typically how it works," Kylo's voice is gruff, but he allows her time, he wants to see how far she can get on her own.

Something else pops into her head before she can put it all together, "What was that even? How could we see them?"

"I don't know. It felt different than our bond, or our visions, it was like…

"A memory. But not ours." She looks around at the glittering halls enveloping them. "Can places have memories?"

"I think this place can do whatever it wants," Kylo sounds a bit further away when he says it.

"But why Anakin and Padme? Why show us that?" Rey turns back to look at Kylo, but immediately averts her eyes when she sees him. Kylo had stopped a ways back and was taking off his cloak and shirt behind her, tucking them into his waistband. Once again, she was confronted with his bare torso.

"What..what are you doing?!" Rey stays not looking at him, but holds up her hands, palms facing out, willing him to stop.

"It's too hot down here," he says simply.

"So?"

"I have to find a way to cool down, I feel like I'm going to pass out. You don't want me to be incapacitated? This helps."

Rey was not used to taking clothes off in the heat. On Jakku, the hotter it was, the more clothes she would have on, to avoid being burnt to death by the sun. But the heat in these caves was so much different than Jakku's. She feels her clothes sticking to her body in ways they haven't before. She feels weighed down by the damp air around her. But still, she wouldn't think of taking off any article here.

She dares to look at him, carefully trying to meet him dead in the eye, to not look anywhere else, but the fresh mark on his chest draws her eyes like a stain. A stain she caused.

"Kylo…" it escapes her as she looks at how quickly infection was spreading in his wound.

He had been waiting for her to say his name since she kissed him. It already seemed like a lifetime ago but it was only a few hours. He misunderstands her breathy voice. He misunderstands her intent, mistaking her worried eyes for hungry ones. He closes the distance between them, squeezing out a confused R2.

"Rey..." his voice surrounds her and makes her spine shiver.

Rey looks up at him, his face now directly above hers, their bodies almost touching, and a look of utter confusion wraps her.

"What are you doing? Your wound, it needs to be dressed," her voice, cold and detached, almost pushes him away.

"Right," he takes a step back.

She eyes him cautiously as she moves into an intervening room. She takes off her bag as he follows, finding a rock nearby to partially sit on. His ears redden at his mistake, and his internal dialogue is brutal.

Rey begins to sort her supplies in the sand and Kylo works up his wounded courage.

"You skipped something," his voice breaks her concentration.

"What?" Rey looks down at her medical supplies, thinking that is what Kylo is referring to.

"In our conversation. You started from the beginning, with why I'm here, but then you skipped to the end with Lord Vader. Something happened between the two," he pauses, before adding, "A few things happened between the two."

It hits the air and stings Rey, her body freezes looking at a bottle of antiseptic.

Her body starts moving again once she takes a breath, but in slow motion. She slowly puts the bottle down and turns her crouched body so her knees face him.

"Kylo," her voice is calm and firm, "A mountain just ate us, showed us your ghost child grandfather, which we haven't even fully addressed yet, then tried to kill us twice. We are now trapped inside of that mountain with a finite number of supplies and the wound I gave you is starting to blister and drain yellow pus. There is a hierarchy of priorities here," Rey is precise in her takedown, "Tell me you understand that."

"I understand," he almost sounds chastened, but breaks that when he adds, "I just think it should be higher on our list."

"Well you're wrong. Now throw me your cloak."

He does, willingly. If anyone else in the Galaxy talked to him the way she just did, they would be, best case, in an infirmary for at least a few weeks. With Rey though, her fiery backtalk causes a smile to grow across his face. He angles his face downward so she can't see it.

Rey is too distracted to notice anyways, with the lush velour of Kylo's cloak in her grasp. She runs her hands along it, almost luxuriating in it. She had never felt something so soft. She skims her fingers over the golden fringe, the fringe that represented Snoke, testing for weak spots. She finds one, and uses all her force to rip it apart.

Kylo breaks out of his thought process when he hears the tear. He almost jumps out of his sitting position before reaching one hand out and yelling, "That's Onderon silk!"

She smirks at his outburst and rips it again, the fabric now structurally compromised.

"It was. Now it's just a very fancy bandage."

She continues to rip it into smaller and smaller pieces, relishing in the shocked look on his face as she obliterates his costume. As she makes one of the final tears, something small and metallic falls out, having been hidden in the lining. The glint of it catches her eye before it disappears almost immediately into the black sand below.

She instinctively reaches down, digging her hands deep into the granules, and clasps around the cool, slight metal, before bringing it back up into the cavern.

"Rey, wait…" Kylo begs, but she can't hear him.

She looks at the gold, shimmering dice in her hands, thumbing the sand off of them. It takes her a moment to realize, but when she does, the edges of her vision blur and the air around them bends. She blinks, and when her eyes reopen, a toddler with an incredible amount of dark hair sits in front of her in the sand, smiling up at the dice. But Rey isn't holding them anymore. Han is.

Rey isn't in control of this. She's totally paralyzed. If she could move, she would have gasped loudly, but her whole body has ceased working. Tears start to well, but she can't blink again to dispel them. She sees Han, so much younger than she knew him, but still with the same underlying warmth covered by roguishness.

Han kneels in front of the young boy, his son, alternating between teasing the baby with the dice and tickling him with his free hand. The baby finally grasps the dice and pulls them down to his mouth. Han grabs the boy and pulls him in for a tight embrace. The tiny boy laughs and claps as Han lifts him up and spins him around.

Then, the vision is gone, and where Rey had just been staring at Ben, Kylo Ren now stands like a wall in front of her. Her eyes struggle to adjust back with the sudden change in perspective.

Rey's body allows her to start breathing again. Kylo is right in front of her and she angles her chin up briefly to his face.

He looks like a child who had been caught with something he shouldn't have.

She can't look at him right now. She's not sure who she is looking at. She instead stares straight into his body in front of her, her eyes moving quickly back and forth, trying to process what had just happened.

"I...they're…" Kylo stumbles, trying to explain why Han's dice were sewn into the robes of the Supreme Leader.

"You went to Achc-To," she interrupts. The words come out and crash against his chest inches in front of her.

"Yes," he says it almost in a trance, none of his usual obfuscation tingeing his reply.

"Just to get these," she lifts up her palm with the dice in them, showing them to him.

"Yes," he answers, even though it is not a question. Rey knows.

She finally is brave enough to look him in the face again. Someone else is there, in Kylo's face with him. She saw him earlier, when she had almost ran her saber through his heart. She saw him before on Achc-To, in the hut as rain poured down.

She reaches her hand up towards his face, pausing at the last moment, seeing the eyes of two men staring down at her, both so wanting. She cusps the side of his face so gently, so slightly, that his own hand immediately comes up to meet hers on his face, pressing her into him more. She feels the weight of his head as it leans into her hand, so needy for her touch.

Her other hand still grasps the dice. She lifts them up and finds Kylo's waistband. When her fingers touch his bare torso he stops breathing, not wanting to risk losing her touch with the slightest of movements. She tucks the dice into his waistband, returning them to his possession, returning them to their rightful inheritor.

His eyes close as she touches him, and it's too much for her. She slides her hand out from under his, causing his eyes to immediately snap open to look at her again. She is looking at the ground now, not at Kylo. He fights something in him telling him to grab her and force her little neck up to look at him again. He takes a step back from her to quiet the voice.

"Sit," she motions towards the rock he had been on before, still not looking at him.

"Rey…"

She shakes her head, "We really have to treat your wound."

He gives a short nod and walks backwards to the rock. She gathers her supplies and walks towards him.

She dips her cloth in water and cleans the burn first, being careful not to disturb the blistering circle. As she does, her other hand settles on his shoulder and her light touch sends shivers through him. He can't remember the last time he had been touched like this by another person. All his skin had known was violence and pain, and here she was, igniting his synapses with something totally foreign.

She cleans with antiseptic next, an ancient method used before the invention of bacta. She had left the few pads not taken by the Resistance with Chewie, just in case. It meant this process would be longer, but deep inside of her something appreciates that. As she presses the disinfectant up to his skin, he sucks his breath in through his teeth.

"Fuck, that's worse than bacta," he gasps.

"I'm sorry," she pauses before talking again, her voice full of regret and sadness, "I'm sorry for all of it Kylo."

"Don't be," his eyes pierce hers and she nods.

She wraps his tattered cloak around him like a sash, tying it off to keep the damp air off the wound. Her body working around his causes the force to hum between them and she steps back when she notices it. She tries to catch it, to see if it will let her in, but it vanishes when they stop touching. Kylo's face shows that he felt it leave too.

Rey sighs before leaning down to repack the bag.

"It's done," she loads the bag onto her back, jumping slightly to push it up, "You ready?"

Kylo nods and stands next to her as they look forward into the endless labyrinth of halls and rooms in front of them.

* * *

 **Thank you for sticking with it this far! These chapters are long, I know, I just wanted you guys to get a little more Reylo in this chapter after waiting ten chapters for them to finally do anything, only to get cock-blocked by Kylo's ghost child-grandparents.**

 **There are some loose ends in this chapter that I promise will be resolved soon. Also, more angst, because who would I be if I didn't just totally obliterate these two before giving them some happiness? Maybe. SOME.**

 **Anyways, thank you to everybody reading. I've never done this before and I am having so much fun writing and reading your reviews. It's amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you.**


	12. Chapter 12

They hike deeper into the seemingly endless chasm. Or, what they assume is deeper. The force seems to grow thicker the more they walk, just like the air, and this is what they use to gauge their path. Rey tries a few times to reach out, to communicate with the force, but it is gelatinous, almost, and resists her. Kylo tries, too, getting only slightly farther than Rey, before being pressed out. It feels purposefully withholding, teasing, even, in its presence.

As they continue to walk, her curiosity grows where his frustration does. She is lost deep in a thought experiment about wicking the air moisture for water when she hears his breathing grow more labored. Afraid her homegrown medical techniques hadn't been enough to stop the infection, she whips around and steps towards him, but stops when she sees him.

He stands clenching and unclenching his fists, his body in a braced position ready for battle. His jaw shifts tightly under his slight stubble and his face grows red. She looks around for immediate threats but sees none. He begins shaking under the tension of his rigid muscles.

"Kylo?" her voice is cautious, unsure.

"If it would just yield!" he screams out, each word growing louder than the last.

"Calm down," she says back unsympathetically.

"You don't understand!"

"Really?" her voice raises to meet his, "I don't understand? I'm the only other fucking person who could understand," they're yelling at each other again. R2 backs up away from them, almost familiar with this by now.

"No, you're different," he shouts, pointing at her, "You have a different relationship with it. You don't know what this feels like, to be shut out. It's tormenting me on purpose!"

She runs her hands over her face in frustration, before clenching her fingers into fists in the air in front of her, "What are you going to do? Choke it with itself?" She pauses for maximum effect, "I know you're used to making things bend to your will, but you don't have a lot of options here," she punctuates her last words by her lightly padding her palm with her opposite fist.

"I've just...it's just...It's always been there, even before I was born, I knew it, and now…" his words eke out past his clench teeth.

"It's still there," she emphasizes every word, but she's softer now, "It's all around us, we're swimming in it."

"But I can't wield it. It's mocking me. It's so accessible and yet so far away," as he says it his hands dig into his thighs, grasping deep into the flesh under his pants. It looks like he is reaching through his thick muscle tissue to the bone below and Rey winces, thinking of the pain it must be causing. She advances towards him without hesitation and grabs his wrists, pulling them upwards. Her touch surprises him, but his outburst doesn't dissipate.

"That's enough," she demands, and looks at his reddening face, "You need to breathe."

He continues to hold his breath like a tantruming child.

"Breathe you stubborn ass!"

He lets out his breath in a huff.

"Listen to me," she still holds his hands up between them, her tiny fingers not even close to closing the distance on his wrists, "breathe."

He obeys, but the veins in his neck and head throb out towards her.

"Close your eyes," he stares straight into her in defiance, tiny red lines growing throughout the whites of his straining eyes. "Now!" Her voice is so commanding he instantly shuts them.

She tries to think of what to do next. She's gotten him this far but his hands are still clenched above her grasp, the skin of them completely white under the pressure.

"You're in an ocean," the words come out of her before she fully formulates them.

"What are you doing?" he says, but his eyes remain closed.

"Just listen," she gathers herself and closes her eyes too, "You're in an ocean, and it's dark. It's so incredibly dark outside, but you can feel the water all around you, covering you, and you know you're safe. On the shore there are starbursts of light, hazy in the mist, but you let the waves take you out, away from them. You're floating on the surface, and you feel the waves rise and fall under you, the water lapping at your neck and chest. When you look up again, all the light is gone, and there is only endless darkness, but it swathes you, it's close and protecting and you're not afraid," she breathes in, and a sense of reminiscence bleeds into this dream she is sharing with him. "You feel the water between your wading fingers as you break through it, you feel it glide against your skin. When you look down, you notice soft blue light growing from your movements in the water, lighting up the sea around you," she swallows, hoping this is working, "Do you see it?"

"I see it," his voice is soft now, disbelieving.

She loosens her grip on him and sets his hands down. When she looks at him again, his eyes are wide open, looking at her with something like complete awe. He is the only person who has ever looked at her like that, not counting BB-8.

She turns away and rubs her hands which had grown sore from the exertion of stopping him, before speaking again, "It's okay to be angry. This is an awful situation we're in..."

"I wouldn't say awful," he counters.

She ignores him, "But don't let it destroy you. Don't let it take your power from you."

"My anger is my power," he says, so endlessly sure. His genuine belief causes her to turn back to him.

"I know he told you that. I know that's what you've believed for so long. But your anger is not all you are," she is almost pleading for him to believe her.

"I suppose I should just 'learn to control it' right? Maybe Luke did teach you something in your days together."

She flashes, briefly, when he mentions Luke. "You could learn to work with it, instead of letting it take over."

His head tilts slightly, "Is that what you were doing when you almost killed me a few hours ago? Working with your anger?"

"No," she looks directly into his eyes, "And I almost lost you because of it." It comes out all at once, but it is a small thing, and it hangs between them.

He should have kissed her then. He would come to regret not kissing her right then for the rest of his life. Instead, he continues to fight.

"And what would be so wrong with that Rey?"

Rey's head shoots back away from Kylo, her neck muscles protruding out, as if his words were a blow, but her feet remain planted firmly in front of him. She lets out a small, pained sigh and turns from him, letting his question go unanswered.

She starts moving forward again and his whole body slumps once her eyes are off him. He was so, so stupid. R2 looks back to Kylo briefly and they share a silent moment, before the droid buzzes off after Rey. He breathes in, wanting to lash out at himself for missing his opportunity, but he stops when the image of the ocean around him pops into his head once more.

He follows them both in silence, his skin burning from the aftershocks of her hands on him.

* * *

"We should stop here," she finally says, after maybe another few hours of identical hallway, identical room, identical hallway, identical room, all walked in silence.

"I can keep going," his hubris shows itself.

"Just because you can doesn't mean you should," she takes her pack off and sets it on the ground in front of her, "Exhaustion can deceive. It's better to stop with some energy left."

He walks to the other side of her chosen room and leans against the glass. It is impossibly cool under his skin. He watches her as she unpacks her bag of tricks, her lips moving silently, inventorying their supplies, calculating their date of demise.

Rey suddenly gasps. She drops everything else and digs deeper into the bag, "Wait."

She takes out the comlink that Chewie had stuffed into her hand earlier. In the haste of everything she forgot, shoving it into her bag. She looks up at Kylo, so hopeful. His expression doesn't change.

She tries it a few times, pressing down the button on the side, calling out for Chewie in this abyss. Only static reverberates back at her.

"Nothing works, I already tried to contact my ships when it trapped me," she ignores him, instead racking her brain for other solutions, before settling her eyes on R2. A slight smile runs through her and she moves quickly past Kylo towards R2. As she does, her saberstaff falls from her hilt to the sand below, right in front of Kylo. She doesn't notice, she is more enveloped in trying to fiddle with R2's controls.

"R2, can you send a message to the _Falcon_?" His eyes go dim for a second, and he comes back in with two disappointed, low whistles.

"I told you," Kylo says, but his voice sounds far away, detached, like he is concentrating on something else.

She realizes he is right and looks down. The light of her cloaked tracking beacon bracelet catches her eye. It's been only slightly more than a day since her arrival on Mustafar, but it feels like so much longer. _We will always come back for you._ Poe's voice echoes through her bones and she calms herself. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, shifting the blue eye of the cloaking device downwards towards her inner wrist, closer to her pulse.

When she stands back up, Kylo has her saber in his hand. He doesn't notice her anymore, completely transfixed by her weapon. She looks down to it and back up to him, and her mouth gapes open. She is unarmed. She is unarmed and alone with him. Her hand immediately shoots to her scar and something inside her bursts, like it did when he had tried to touch her in the forest. But the force was too thick here. The shockwave that she emits in her fear is so slight this time it only nudges Kylo.

He snaps out of his trance when he feels her, only to find her in complete terror next to him, her arms outstretched protectively in front of R2. He realizes what this looks like, realizes her horror, and immediately extends her saber back to her. She hesitates for a moment, letting the shock drain from her face, before reaching out and taking it from him gently, her fear being replaced with a deep lethargy.

"Did you think…" he starts, his voice deep and edging on hurt.

"No," she interrupts him abruptly.

They are silent for a moment.

His deep voice breaks the tension, trying to explain, "The stone that was my grandfather's, your blue saber...it still calls out to me. Like it's taunting me."

She exhales and sits slowly down in the sand below next to R2, exhausted from her wasted panic. She holds the saber in her lap, looking down at it.

"They're both your grandfather's stone," she says in a sigh.

"What?" his voice is slight, hidden in disbelief.

"When we fought, the crystal broke," her eyes don't leave he saber.

"That's impossible, the force it takes to break a kyber crystal..." the weight of what she said causes him to sit down across from her.

A slight smile edges at her lips, still directed towards her weapon, "That's what your mother said, even when she held both the pieces in her hands. It split, it split perfectly. I went into the kyber caves thinking it was broken, but they showed me how to rebuild it."

"They?" Kylo's eyebrows draw up towards each other.

"It? I don't know how to describe what it was."

"How long ago?"

"It was a year after Crait."

"How did you know? Where to go? What to do?" the questions flow out of him, he had been waiting so long to ask them.

"There are some things I can't tell you," she looks at him, waiting for his expression to grow angry, resentful, but it doesn't. "The place I went to, it was like this," she looks up at the cavern above them, "It played tricks. It showed me things, sometimes horrid things. It tried to keep me from leaving, too."

"Show me?" he reaches his hand out, remembering how she had calmed him with her dreams after his outburst earlier. That part of their connection still worked, despite everything.

"I…" her body tenses and her voice burns as she remembers the last time he had reached his hand out like that, on Starkiller.

He remembers then, too, and immediately puts his hand down. She stops everything and his heart drops, thinking he had ruined her openness.

"I can tell you," she offers, after a pause.

He nods, his eyes full of something she can't immediately place.

"You've been in a kyber cave, before, obviously," she motions to his own weapon.

"More than once," he confirms.

"What did it show you?"

He hesitates, but knows his offering of truth will being hers forward, "The first time, it showed me my father...Han's...death. It showed me killing him."

Rey looks down, her eyes immediately stinging at the memory.

"The second time…" Kylo pauses, he looks up at her and swallows, thinking he should lie. He doesn't, "The second time it showed me you."

Rey's head snaps up, her eyes instantly narrow, disbelieving.

"It was just an outline of a woman then, but now I know it was you. In the throne room. Your hand in mine."

Rey's gaze shifts from him to the sand between them. Her hands move from her knees, and she bring them to cross around her torso, a quiet barrier.

He notices and shifts. He tries to break her out of it with another question, "What did it show you?"

"A lot of things. Luke, my friends, you, briefly."

He perks up, but doesn't press, at the mention of himself showing up in the kyber caves.

"I held Anakin's crystals in my hands and tried to meditate, but it kept throwing these images at me, testing me. There was so much pain, and I tried so hard to turn away from it, to resist it like Luke had told me to. But it showed me such awful things."

Her breath stutters in as tears pool in her eyes. She wants to fight the words, like she had been the last two years. But she can't hold them inside any longer. She had never told anyone, not even Finn, not even her best friend, about what had happened in those caves, knowing they couldn't understand. When she had emerged with a half red saber, her friends had so many questions, there was so much they couldn't understand. And she couldn't explain it to them because she didn't understand it herself. She will always remember the flash of fear in Poe's eyes when she lit her weapon for the first time, his second of recognition of something in her that she didn't want to face herself. Her saber was a physical manifestation of her soul, and half of it was bleeding.

After a while, everything went back to normal, they stopped asking her, and she kept it bottled inside of her. The truth of what had happened. And now here she was, pouring it all out to her mortal enemy.

She continues after some deep breaths, "It felt like hours of looping pain, but then there was a lull, and I thought it was over, I thought I was ready. But then...my parents. I saw their faces, I saw my mother calling for me. I saw her crying, clawing at her heart. And then she saw me," tears stream down Rey's face, "She saw me and she grabbed me to her and she hugged me, so tight, she asked me to forgive her," her voice sputters out, "It was all I wanted, it was all I ever wanted, to feel her again, to know she loved me, and for her to know I loved her back, even after…" she wipes her running nose, "But when I turned to her to tell her, to tell her I loved her and I forgave her, her skin," Rey touches her own face, remembering, "her skin sagged and decayed into her skull. She rotted in front of me, into her pauper's grave on that fucking planet."

Kylo moves quietly, until he is sitting next to her, close to her, mirroring how she sat next to him after his mother's death.

"It was then, I felt the pain of one of the crystals, I felt it bleeding in my grasp and I wanted it to stop, but I also...didn't. I wanted it to bleed inwardly like I did, like I do. It burnt and fought, but it collapsed under my hand. And then it was over."

She looks over at him, looking so intently at her from his new position next to her. Their eyes meet through both their tears.

 _You're not alone._

 _Neither are you._

They don't speak it, and with their bond unable to reopen in this place, they don't hear each other think it either. But each one knows that's what the other was saying. She breaks her eyes away first.

"We should try to sleep," she suggests, after wiping her tears away, "The heat is draining and we don't know what lies ahead. We should get rest."

His lips tighten, not wanting to stop being this close, but he agrees and stands.

"Hand me the bag?" she asks, and he does. She digs to the bottom of it and pulls out two blankets.

"Two?" he asks, curiously.

"I always bring two, just in case it gets colder than I thought...I don't think we'll have that problem here." She offers him one, "Use it as your sleeping mat. Sand is...relentless." She narrows her bloodshot eyes at the tiny granules as she says it.

They take to opposite sides of the room, which seems to grow smaller as they do. Rey eyes it suspiciously, but explains it away using her exhaustion as the cause. She just wants to sleep away this day, so she lies down quickly, the moment between them still lingering in the air.

They both face their respective walls, not daring to look at one another. It is the first time they have shared a sleeping space, have shared this part of being close. Rey closes her eyes and tries to calm herself from her admissions, tries not to think about the day. One moment creeps in, under her pain, and tingles at her now chapped lips. She shoots her hands up to her lips, remembering what he felt like pressed up against them. She runs her hands across them but stops abruptly, growing hot with embarrassment, before remembering he can't hear her thoughts. Her heart settles before fatigue overtakes her.

Kylo lays opposite, his fingers on his lips too, but the images of her being so trusting with him, so open, so compassionate, overtake the memory of the kiss, for some reason. He sees her eyes, so calm, so resolute, so full of caring, in front of his stupid sniveling form. She had stilled him, quieted the self-hate in his brain for a moment. No one else had cared enough to even try to do that. She had shared secrets, her life, with him. No one else had ever done that, willingly, with him. He closes his eyes and sees her staring back at him from beneath his lids, and calms into sleep.

R2 looks at the two, shaking his head slightly, understanding better than they did what was going on, before lapsing into sleep mode.

* * *

He turns to her in the night. Or whatever this was. Their resting period between walking. It had only been a few short hours since they had fallen asleep, but his eyes had groggily opened to see her next to him and the exhilaration that had spring in him was hard to soothe. She was so much closer than she had been when they originally laid down, and he knows she wouldn't have moved of her own accord. He narrows his eyes and looks side to side at the cave walls, but they don't move. He looks back to Rey, unable to take his eyes off her for more than a moment.

The air is so heavy with heat, he can't tell if that is what's making it hard to breathe or if it's seeing her so close to him. He notices she had undressed slightly in her sleep, the oppressive heat leaving her wearing just her breast band and pants. It looks as if she tried to tent her shirt wrap around her for modesty, but it hadn't worked. She must have sloughed it off in her sleep. He tries to fight his wandering gaze, but he lets in, and traces his eyes around her slight curves as her breath raises her chest up and down next to him. He has never seen this part of her. He knew her mind, but this was the first time he had a chance to take in her body.

His eyes are drawn to the tiny, but dark freckles which haphazardly speckle her skin. He thinks back to the thin beams of sun streaming in from tiny holes in the side of her AT-AT home, the one he saw in her mind in the interrogation room. He imagines the light from the dawn streaming in to touch her body, always in those same places before she awoke, dotting her skin with freckles from exposure.

He wants desperately to reach out and touch each one, to feel her shudder underneath him as he traces and connects each one lightly. He fights it, knowing it would be wrong to touch her as she slept, even if she would never know.

When he finally tears his eyes away from this wish, he looks to her face. Her eyes are open and staring back at him. A sense of panic immediately rises in him. How long had she been awake? Blood rises against the skin of his face and he can feel himself getting red out of embarrassment. Just as he starts to shift backwards and away from her, he feels her hand grab his, so lightly. She is shaking, but she is touching him anyway.

She pulls his hand until it is over her body and lightly places it down on her ribs, right above a dark freckle. She rests her own hands on either side of her body and looks up at him expectantly.

He wants this and she is giving it to him, this small, huge thing, so he begins. He takes his fingerprints and grazes them lightly over the freckle, circling it as he does. Now he is shaking too.

He doesn't let that stop him. He moves his body closer to her, until he is laying on his side almost pressed up against her, to see more as his graze tickles across her belly and to her sides. He never lifts his finger as it moves from dot to dot. His touch is so light he is almost not touching her, and it makes her shiver slightly in this unduly hot room. At each new freckle, he stops, briefly circling it, then moves onto the next. When he gets to her scar, all four of his fingers run the length of it, before returning to one single roving digit. His touch feels electric, and they both feel the force, so lost to them here, ignite where they touch.

He runs his finger through the middle of her breast band, careful not to take too much without permission. She holds her breath as his fingers travel between her breasts. He is on her chest now, then her neck, then their faces are so close to one another again, she can feel his breath on her cheeks.

He wants so badly to kiss her, to pay her back for the kiss she had initiated when they had first met in this place, but he knows he won't stop with a kiss. She looks up to his eyes and sees the impossible want. Everything feels tight around them as he inches closer to her.

She turns her head away before grabbing his hand slowly, breaking the taut air. She guides his hand off her skin, not knowing how far she wants this to go. With his hand in hers, she curls her body away from his, until her back is exposed to him. His stomach drops as she turns from him, thinking she is breaking this off.

Instead, she twists their hands down together to rest on her lower back. It is damp with sweat and she flushes hot for a moment, embarrassed, but he doesn't notice. He takes the hint she is giving and continues tracing the new constellations of freckles that he finds on her back. Her body shivers as his fingers skim her spine, barely touching her. Her growing lust clouds her thoughts. The muscles in her thighs twitch and tighten and the movement reverberates into her core. She feels something pool between her legs.

She closes her eyes tight and tenses up her shoulders, realizing her body was preparing for something she didn't know if she was ready for yet.

He immediately withdraws his hand from her, noticing her body change. She had only moved like that once under his touch before, when they had seen the vision in the forest. Those two little children, their two little children, with Rey seeing a son, and him a daughter. His head immediately pops up to look around the now tiny room, hoping to see that little girl again.

Before he thinks, he speaks, "Do you see something? Do you see him?" the last word stings Rey, she knows exactly who he is talking about when he says _him_.

She rolls back over, back to facing the obsidian ceiling above. She doesn't look at Kylo. The heat that had been coursing through her body grows cold.

"No. I don't think those versions of our visions exist anymore," she replies as her hand instinctively runs its way across her scar.

A guilt bounces off every part of him, replacing the euphoria he had felt when he was touching her body, as he remembers what he had done, how he had shredded her and how she just forgave him for it. Forgave him for stealing that version of her happy ending. Of their happy ending.

Something in him breaks as he remembers and he moves away from her. "You can't let me do this Rey. I've taken so much from you. I will take so much more if you let me. I will devour you. I will snuff you out. Don't let me."

Rey props herself up on her elbows, sweat running down her stomach and pooling near her navel, and she finds him, "No you won't." Her voice is sure.

"How do you know?"

"I've seen you, remember? All of you."

"And when you did, you called me what I am, a monster."

Her eyebrows knit together and her eyes narrow, causing tiny lines to form on her temples, "That's not all that's in you. I didn't kiss a monster. I kissed you, Kylo."

"Why _did_ you kiss me? Why are you doing any of this? It's cruel, and painful, more painful than anything you've ever done to me, to give me this, this dream, with no intention of reciprocating what I feel outside these walls."

"And what do you feel, Kylo? Not everything is a power play, not everything is something to be won. I'm not a playing a game here."

"Everything is about power, everything," he raises his voice and sounds like a record, repeating what had been poured into him on autopilot.

Rey's breath hitches at his harshness and she looks away. She sits fully up and pulls herself up until she is standing. She starts to walk away.

"Where are you going?" the edge of anger still holds in his tone.

"Away."

"Wait, Rey, don't, if this place shifts I will lose you," he softens, full of instant regret.

"You seem to be doing that all on your own."

She walks deeper into an adjoining hallway, disappearing from his view. It is at this moment, almost on cue, that the ground starts to rumble again.

He hears her voice echo, "Kylo!" but he can't see her.

"REY!"

Everything shifts.


	13. Chapter 13

The red of Kylo's saber is out immediately, casting a threatening veil over the shifting walls around him, as is his habit when his fear spikes above a certain level. The room expands back to its original size and the hallway Rey's scream came from closes almost mechanically before Kylo reaches it. He grinds his heels into the sand to avoid running into the smooth glass wall as the room around him clinks with the quake, the crystals sounding almost elegant in the tremor.

He circles his saber, not knowing when the shaking of the earth would stop, remembering the way things had collapsed when the rooms moved previously. He looks to R2, still in sleep mode feet from him, and instinctively crouches over the droid to keep debris from falling on him.

R2 awakes to find Kylo over him, weapon ignited, and starts screaming, backing up hard into a wall that was not behind him before. Kylo looks at R2, who looks back, their pasts replaying. This moment serves as a reflection, echoes of Skywalker's Jedi Temple, of the world crumbling around them, play in both their histories. Kylo backs up from the droid, enough to be out of range, trying to mollify the situation, but does not sheath his weapon. Goosebumps gather on his skin as the chasm around them stops shaking.

"REY!" his scream is immediate, deep and savage. He screams her name, as if an accusation to this mountain, to this thing that took her.

"Kylo!" the voice is muffled, but loud.

"Rey?!"

He doesn't wait for a response, instead his saber burrows deep into the wall where her voice was, trying to get to her, trying to burn through to her. The black barrier in front of him begins to glow orange, then red, then magma starts to pool, running so close to his knuckles down to the sand below. The pain from the heat starts to burn, but he keeps his saber buried in the wall. His face contorts, beads sweat. He lets out a curdling scream as the top layer of his skin singes off. He can feel the heat working further and further down through his hands, but he can't stop, he has to get to her. When it hits his connective tissue, his body betrays him and he retracts his weapon before grasping his hand.

He drops to his knees, the residual heat from his saber reconstructing the sand below him into tiny pieces of glass.

"Rey," it is almost silent, an almost prayer, hoping she could hear him despite everything. He begins to think the voice was a phantom, a trick, as he cradles his burnt hand in the other. His throat grows raw, holding back tears.

R2 rolls up cautiously to Kylo, understanding now his intent for looming over him. R2 drags the supplies bag in front of him noticing Kylo's hand is badly burnt. An offer of kindness in exchange for the protection Kylo had tried to give him.

Kylo doesn't notice. Instead, he leans his forehead into the wall, the cooling lava pooled beside him. He had her. He had her and now she was gone. He starts to ram his head into the wall before him, the chamber echoing with the dull pain of it all. R2 comes closer, closer than he has been since the caves, and prods Kylo with the supplies, trying to break him from his thought.

Feeling the droid's care, Kylo whispers to himself, "You're in an ocean…" He would never know Rey's forehead was pressed into the opposite wall, whispering the same.

His head stops its movement and instead rests on the wall. He turns his head to the side to look at R2, who coos a pacifying tone.

As he turns around to grab the knapsack with his strong hand, the room around him alights in a blue haze. He tries to call his saber to him, but realizes he can't do that here. Before he has time to twist his body around to reach the saber, two figures appear sitting in the middle of the room. He pauses.

He had never seen an adult Anakin Skywalker, unencumbered by the mask and breathing apparatus. Pictures of Vader permeated his youth, plastered the halls of the Senate when his mother was outed as his daughter. When he was outed as his grandson. No, not outed, when he was graced with the knowledge of his lineage.

But Anakin, he didn't know if any pictures of Anakin existed in the Galaxy. But here he was, sitting in front of Kylo. There was no doubt this was Anakin, there were traces of Luke, the Luke Kylo knew in his youth, all over him. The light eyes and hair, the smile. His Uncle and his Grandfather blended together in front of him.

Anakin wore the Padawan braid still, so he was young, but there was rebellion in his eyes as he looked at her.

Her. Padme. Kylo tries to avoid her. She is older than she was in the last vision and her beauty had only grown. Kylo exhales and settles when he finally looks at her, relaxing a bit in her presence. Something like moonlight bounces off her exposed skin and she looks at Anakin uncomfortably. Kylo feels the tension in the air between them, having grown well accustomed to that same tension over the past day in the caves with Rey. Really, having grown accustomed to it over the course of his entire connection with Rey.

It is Anakin who speaks first, breaking Kylo's mind of Rey for a moment.

"From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you," Anakin's voice is soft, sweet. Kylo bristles as the juxtaposition between this man and Vader. He remembers the little boy he and Rey had seen a day earlier, so clearly enamored with Padme immediately. He remembers his younger self, seeing Rey for the first time, and all the confusion she had wrought in him immediately.

"Now that I'm with you again," Anakin continues, "I'm in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you, I can't breathe. I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given to me." Kylo leans forward, seeing the reverberation of his own life in this. "My heart is beating, hoping that that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me. What can I do? I will do anything that you ask."

Kylo closes his eyes. He was watching his thoughts come out of his grandfather's mouth. His stomach lurches, hoping, and he can't tell who that hope is for. A silence descends and he can't take it. Kylo looks to Padme, who seems to be looking directly at him now. His heart skips as he looks back.

Anakin breaks in, "If you are suffering as much as I am, please, tell me."

"I can't," her voice is small, almost a whisper, "We can't, it's...just not possible."

"Anything is possible Padme, listen to me," Anakin closes in on her. Kylo recognizes the tactic, recognizes the thirst for power just there, under the skin. He recognizes Vader.

"No, you listen," Padme moves, walking across the room, pushing away from Anakin, "We live in a real world. Come back to it. You're studying to become a Jedi, I'm...I'm a senator."

He imagines the chasm between Rey and him playing out, instead of the one between his grandparents. _You destroy, I save. You hate, I love. You're dark, I'm light._

"If you follow your thoughts through to conclusion, it will take us to a place we cannot go, regardless of the way we feel about each other," Padme's voice is strong, resolute. He has heard the same tone out of Rey and out of his mother. He shuts his eyes when his mind flashes to Leia, Padme's after image sticking in his eyelids. He imagines Leia, young. His earliest memory of her, leaning over him, kissing his forehead before bed. Her memory overlays with Padme's. Mother and daughter.

When he opens his eyes, they're gone. The room is back to blackness, the only light coming from the refracting glass.

His mind starts cycling through what this place has shown him, trying to make sense of it, but all he can see is Rey. Her hand on his in the dark, guiding him to her. Her breath on his neck as she dressed his wound. Her tears falling in the hut on Achc-To. Her face looking up at his through the escape pod. Everything is out of order, is jumbled.

 _If you follow your thoughts out to conclusion, it will take us to a place we cannot go._ His grandmother's words are a cacophony inside of him, blotting out those memories, confirming his suspicions of what he would do to Rey if she let him.

In his mind's eye, an image appears, of Rey, of Rey but not Rey, of Rey but older, standing in front of him. Someone unseen holds a blaster to her temple and tears run down her dusty cheeks. _Traitor!_ The words are unspoken, but reverberate in his head, and her body falls next to his, executed together.

Another image, another timeline, plays, of Rey, flanked by the bodies of her dismembered friends. Her face sees him, looks at him, and her saber is through his throat before he can speak.

Kylo, the real Kylo, cradles his neck in the caves, his burnt hand cracking in the movement.

Another timeline, Rey stands outside a prison cell. Outside his prison cell, the glass keeping him from her. Pity overtakes her eyes as she looks down at him. Dameron appears, wrapping his arm around her waist, kissing her shoulder before leading her away for the last time.

He follows every image out to conclusion, playing all of their possible timelines in his head. Her body is ripped from a ship by an explosion, her heart pierced by a stormtrooper's blast, her skin flayed by Hux.

Every emotion boils in him as his brain won't stop playing the timelines of her, won't stop playing the images of her dying, or leaving. The cracks of his burn start bleeding as his fists clench and unclench. From deep inside his belly something thunders and an agonizing cry escapes him, half pure rage and half torment. His cheeks are already wet from tears he hadn't known he shed.

He screams into the blackness for what seems like hours, until his chest throbs. Every part of him is pain now. Something in him wants Rey so badly, wants her here with him, her touch on him, but to what end? To those ends?

He goes on like this until he feels cold metal brush against his arm. R2. He had forgot he had an audience.

He opens his eyes and glances towards the droid pushing up close to him, but he does not look at him. R2 hadn't dared get this close to Kylo since they had met again here, in this place. They had been close once, friends even, until his Uncle betrayed him. R2 had been his first training partner, before Kylo was even taller than the droid. Luke had proved Kylo's emerging abilities using R2, Han's mouth hanging open when faced with his tiny son's dexterity. Leia knew, had known, though, since she first felt him growing inside her.

Kylo had seen R2 the night of his Uncle's betrayal through the fire, shaking at the destruction Kylo and his just born Knights had wrought. He had thought about destroying the droid then, thought about running his saber through his cool metal, about watching R2 split perfectly in half. But he hadn't. Something in him stopped him.

And now he sat, here, in the impossible place, being comforted by the droid he had spared from his own hand years earlier.

R2 nudges him slightly, trying to catch his attention away from his inner turmoil. Kylo bunches up his eyebrows as R2 moves slightly farther away, and then returns to bump into him again. Finally, Kylo turns his head towards R2 and looks at him directly.

"What?!" the words are unduly harsh as they escape him.

R2 backs up, but not in fear. He doesn't beep a reply. Instead, he turns his head towards the center of the room, where Anakin and Padme had just been, and his holoprojector lights up.

It takes a moment for Kylo's eyes to adjust to the light filling the room. When he does, he sees a vista beyond beautiful. He sees Naboo. Specifically, Varykino, home once to Padme's family, the Naberrie's. He recognizes it from his youth. They had only gone once, but his mother had told him to remember this place. She hadn't told him why at the time, but now he understood.

The water rolled in the Lake Country behind them. Them. Padme and Anakin stand together, the sun setting on their wedding clothes. This is where they had married. They were married. He had never known, he had thought theirs had been a relationship of passion only, but they had committed to each other here. Their faces looped in R2's memory, looking so happy, so content. A stark difference from the pent up love he had seen displayed from them before.

It had been possible for them. Against everything, they had married. They were happy. They had each other. This was a timeline for Vader. This could be a timeline for him.

"Padme Amidala is your grandmother," Rey's voice wafts over him, lost in herself.

Kylo turns his body around and sees Rey standing in the newly formed hallway to the left of him, transfixed by the hologram playing in front of him. Her eyes pry themselves away from the image and look at Kylo, pleadingly.

His heart picks up, and he can't help that his lips curl up slightly at the knowledge she is safe, "Took you long enough."

Rey sits down on the sand close to Kylo. Closer than she had ever sat next to him.

Rey shakes her head, looking to the hologram looping in front of her, looking at the sheer love and joy in both their faces. "I just, I never knew...I always assumed Luke and Leia were the product of..."

"Rape?"

"...Of hate. I didn't know that he was capable of love, or that someone loved him back. I never fathomed he could have been _married_. In all the stories I've ever heard about him, he was always an absolute villain."

"He wasn't always that."

Rey sighs, realizing none of the Skywalker men have ever lived up to her expectations.

"It's…" Kylo begins to explain.

"22 ABY," Rey already knows.

"Yes," his smile widens. She was too smart.

"This is why you thought I was going to Naboo."

"Yes," he confirms.

Rey and Kylo continue to watch silently as R2 plays the scene. It reminds Rey of a music box she had once seen in Unkar Plutt's junk, one he had hit her for touching. They cannot hear the vows, only the soft lapping of water coming from R2's recollection.

"R2 was there," Rey realizes in a breath. The droid lets out a distracted whistle in response. "I knew you had secrets," her voice is playful as she addresses him. As she looks over to R2 on the other side of Kylo, she notices the blackness of Kylo's hand, and the dark liquid pouring out through its cracks onto his pants beneath it.

She lets out an audible gasp before reaching for it. She thinks better of grabbing an injury, though, and pulls away at the last second.

"What happened?!" she is almost yelling, but not quite. R2 cuts the transmission, startled by her voice, and they are broken of the beautiful memory.

He motions to the wall behind him. A deep gash, now cooled back to its original obsidian, runs deep into it and she follows it down to his saber laying dormant on the floor beneath it, surrounded by glittering glass.

"Why would you…" she begins to ask before she realizes that was the spot she must have disappeared behind.

"I needed to get to you," he responds to her unasked question, looking straight ahead and not at her.

She extends her body over him and his stomach seizes in anticipation for a moment, feeling her muscles stretch over his legs. When he sees that she is only reaching for the knapsack across him, he settles. She drags it over to her side before digging through it and taking out supplies.

"Give me your hand," she asks, distractedly, as she unfurls gauze.

He doesn't move.

"Give me your hand, Kylo," she is more direct this time and he obliges.

She holds his palm in her own, careful not to touch the top. She dips her finger in salve and begins to rub it over the burn. His fingers tighten around hers as she does, recoiling from the sting. This was the third time she had taken care of him in a day, and he didn't deserve any of it, he realizes, as he holds her hand in his.

He looks up at her face, lit dimly, as it works. She is focused on her task. Her hair, wet from sweat, runs down in pieces from her face as she wraps his hand. He admires every soft curve, every slight movement of her lips, which silently run through the stages of dressing a wound.

Suddenly, she speaks, and he has to pretend he wasn't just staring at her, "Who's Obi-Wan?"

A surge of shock at hearing that name from her lips runs through him. His grip tightens even more around her.

"Where did you hear that name?" his gaze is unapologetically on her now.

She looks up from his hand, confused, "It didn't show you him?"

"What?" he reverberates her confusion back to her.

"The caves, they didn't show you Obi-Wan?" Rey's mind is in disarray, she had just assumed the caves would show them the same images.

"No...they showed me...something else," Kylo responds, feeling guilt at the apparitions he had seen and what they had stirred in him.

"Something else?" her voice is half questioning, half trying to comprehend. She takes a breath, as her mind begins to form new explanations. "What is this place?" she repeats her same question from the day before.

"I don't know," Kylo shakes his head, freeing himself from looking at her.

"I think it's...I think it's intelligent," she says, not quite wanting to say it outloud just yet.

He looks back to her, wondering if she's gone insane. She shakes her head sensing his apprehension.

"I think it's more than just trapped memories. I think it's that too, but...it showed us Padme and Anakin meeting for a reason. And then it separated us and showed us two different things. It's doing this on purpose. It brought us here to show us these things."

He pauses, letting a contemplative silence dawn over them. He knew what she was saying was right, but he wasn't sure how. He thought the force had brought them together before, but he was wrong, it had only been Snoke. Was this another game that someone was playing on them?

After a while, he says the only thing he can think to say, knowing she wouldn't have an answer, "Why?"

"I don't know, but I don't think it is done with us yet."

* * *

She finishes wrapping his hand and packs up in silence. They're both still tired, but Rey's survival instincts are too far buried in her own thoughts to force them to rest. She needs to think, they both do. They begin walking in a haze, both lost in their own heads.

After an hour or so, Kylo picks up his pace, until he is walking next to her, instead of behind her, edging R2 out.

They walk in unison for a while, Kylo focusing on how many steps it takes her to match his own, trying to think of what to say to bring them out of silence. Finally, he speaks, "Obi-Wan was Anakin's master."

Rey nods, still focusing forward, Kylo only confirming what she had already seen in the cave's memory. She knew that much about Obi-Wan.

Kylo, wanting more from her than a nod, gives her more information, hoping it will bring her out of her own mind and get her talking to him, "After Anakin became Vader, Obi-Wan blamed himself. He disappeared to Tatooine. He watched Skywalker grow up from a far. He eventually become Luke's first master, but they all knew him as Ben Kenobi."

Rey stops and looks up at Kylo. _Ben._

"Ben Solo was named for him, yes," Kylo knew what she was thinking, and answered the question he knew was coming before she could ask it.

She sighs and looks at the ground. He had offered so much. She pauses, thinking, before she speaks again, searching for what to say in response.

"I've heard his voice before," she gives him a truth back for his.

"What?"

"Obi-Wan. I'd heard him in my head before today. Only a few times, but, I'd heard him."

"How?" Kylo leans on the wall of the hallway behind him, hoping what she would say would help him to make sense out of this powerful woman who came from nothing.

"When I was ten, I tried to climb The Spike in the Imperial Graveyard."

Kylo's eyebrows raise, and she realizes she needs to explain more, that the jargon she grew up with on Jakku doesn't translate here.

"It was a Star Destroyer, once, but it had crashed so hard that it burrowed into the sand. All that remained was its tail end sticking straight into the air. It was the tallest thing on Jakku."

"And you tried to climb it?" Kylo's voice is full of disbelief, but the question was an honest one, searching for a motive.

Rey nods, "It was the highest vantage point. Most of the ships had been so picked over by that time, and I needed parts for food. I thought if I could see everything, I could see something someone else hadn't."

Kylo stares at her, remembering how much she had to go through before he met her, imagining her ten year old body, a body that should have been playing and reading and laughing, pulling itself up to fight for food, something so basic to him.

"I'd tried to climb it when I was younger, but my arms were too short. When I was ten, I was big enough, barely, but I was. So, I started climbing. I made it maybe, 15 meters, before my grip gave out. I learned later how to use belays and ropes to climb, but I was young and I didn't know," she chuckles, more to herself, more at her ignorance, than anything. "And so I fell."

"15 meters?" Kylo marvels at the distance, knowing Rey wouldn't exaggerate.

Rey continues to nod as she speaks, "I woke up in the sand, and I couldn't move. I couldn't feel anything. But there was this voice, and it said, 'Get up Rey', and I knew I could. And I did. And I walked back to my AT-AT. I had cracked five ribs, but I survived." She pauses as something like pride swells in her, "I made it to the top of The Spike when I was fourteen."

Kylo smiles at that.

"The voice, it was his. It was Obi-Wan's. I heard it a handful of times since, always willing me to keep going. I heard it for the last time in Maz Kanata's cellar. He called my name, he said, 'These are your first steps.' And that was it, until this place showed me him."

"He was one of the only Jedi to survive the Great Purge that was Order 66," Snoke's words escape Kylo. Rey winces at the rhetoric.

Kylo notices, and instead, switches to the words his mother used to tell him about Kenobi, "He was a friend of Leia's father, Bail Organa, during the Clone Wars. He was the reason they all came together, Leia, Han, Luke, the Wookie. He saved their lives from Lord Vader by sacrificing himself. That's all they told me about him."

"He's dead?" Rey knows this, knows he wouldn't still be alive, but the question still ekes out of her like a hope being extinguished.

"He's very dead. He died the day my parents met," Kylo breaks from her and starts walking again, tired of talking about the past.

Rey stays behind, processing.

"Wait." He turns to her, "What did you see?"

"Padme and Anakin again," he replies, looking at the room he had just stepped into.

"Why would it show you them again?" Rey face scrunches.

Kylo ignores the question, instead, he forms a command, "Come look at this."

She obeys, walking into the room he stands in, expecting to find more of the same identical rooms they had walked through over the course of the last day and a half. Instead, she is confronted with something new.

Where there used to be sharp, geometric angles, now there were smooth curves. The glass had all but disappeared, still glinting in certain areas, but it only sparsely. Rey was thankful for that, she had never liked mirrors. Rey was thankful for something else, too. Beneath them, the sand had been replaced by cooled matte obsidian rock, curving and dipping. She almost falls to her knees in glee.

"No more sand," she says, quietly but triumphantly.

Kylo chuckles, "Of course that is what you would notice first."

"We must be getting closer," she surmises, as she looks up and admires their new surrounding.

"To what?"

"To whatever it wants us to see."

* * *

As they walk, the rooms continue to change, slowly. The ripples in the walls start to smooth out, the floor beneath them loses it's uneven waves, until they are once again able to look up from their steps, unconcerned about tripping into a divot.

They go on for hours, bolstered by the knowledge they may be getting closer, but it seems never ending. They talk intermittently, about the supplies, about the cave's memories, trying to make sense out of it, but mostly they are silent.

It's Kylo that stops them this time.

"We should rest here," he announces when they get to a room with smooth craters large enough for lying down in.

Rey drops the pack immediately, as if she had been waiting for him to say it. She stretches up towards the ceiling above, inadvertently exposing her stomach to him slightly as she does. She reaches up and cracks her neck before settling down, claiming a crater and hauling the knapsack between her legs.

"You should let me carry that tomorrow," he poses, mentally kicking himself for not offering until now.

"Yeah, I'll let the infirmed one who can't stop getting hurt carry the supplies, great idea. Then you can throw out your back and make it a trifecta of injuries," Rey teases and begins to unpack.

Kylo rolls his eyes as he watches Rey dig through the bag. He knows the futility of arguing with strong-headed people, so he lets it go. Rey finally gets to the bottom and takes out the two blankets and a new satchel of water. She carefully transfers the water from the portable bladder into their canteen.

"There's enough for two more canteens full," she says to herself.

"How long will that last?" he asks, looking down at his bandaged hand.

"A day, really. We can probably make it two," she had packed enough for a week, but with the heat and the fact that there were two of them, the supply had dried up quickly.

"Then?"

"I don't think dehydration will take that long in this heat," she offers up a ration packet and the newly refilled canteen to him.

"Right," he takes them, but doesn't eat or drink. Instead, he holds them like the precious resources they are.

"So we're on a timeline," she opines.

"Too bad we're not moisture farmers," he says mindlessly, wiping the humidity from his brow.

Rey, who had been opening her own ration packet, perks up, "What did you say?"

"Nevermind," Kylo says, looking around trying to pick a crater that seems satisfactory.

"No, what did you say?" she presses.

"I said 'too bad we're not moisture farmers.' It was stupid, laugh at me some more," his usual self-pity comes back to the surface.

Rey pops up out of the crater and rushes Kylo. He can't make sense out of the blur she has become, but braces. She is to him in an instant, placing her hands on either side of his face. His hands instinctively settle on the slight curve of her hips, but in her excitement, she doesn't notice his touch.

"You beautiful bastard," she declares, and wants to kiss him on his cheeks, like she does with Finn and Poe and Rose when she's celebrating, but she stops herself. Instead she breaks her grasp, and his, and rushes back into her crater, pulling out a tarp, a respirator, and a water filter.

"What are you doing?" Kylo asks after his heart calms from touching her for the briefest of moments.

She ignores him. Instead, he sees her kneel to R2. He can't tell what they are talking about, but the droid is animated, and pops open his chest plate to hand her something. Rey touches the top of R2's body, and a slight pang of jealousy hits Kylo, seeing the droid receive what he wanted so badly again, what he had lost just a moment ago: her touch.

Rey runs back to her crater and begins to tent the tarp, running part of the respirator tube into it.

Kylo figures it out, and rushes to crouch near the crater, "You're building a vaporator." His voice is full of awe and his mouth gapes open. Rey is smiling when she looks up at him. She reaches out and touches his jaw, slowly closing his open mouth until they are looking at each other, her hand still on his face.

"Took you long enough," she beams in this dark place. Kylo would never forget her face in this moment, not for the rest of his life.


	14. Chapter 14

As the oxygen from the respirator tank cools the air inside her makeshift vaporator, condensation from the heat outside forms water droplets on the tarp, which drip down into the excess respirator tubing Rey has molded into its edges. She funnels the trace amounts of water into the portable bladders until they are back at capacity, before shutting down the operation.

Kylo stares at her the entire time she works, not believing the endless ingenuity and power packed into her body.

She finally stands up after she repacks the supplies, arching her back, stiff from leaning over for the past hour or so. It hadn't taken long for the condensation to form, it was so much quicker here than on Jakku. On Jakku, her vaporator might run for a full month and only get her a gallon of water. Maybe that's why she hadn't thought of it. Here, however, she had 3 gallons in an hour, the moisture in the air being so dense.

She sees the canteen next to Kylo, who had been sitting on the ground next to her, and picks it up, handing it to him again, "Drink, drink as much as you want. Rest assured, dehydration won't be the thing to kill us down here. It will almost certainly be something else," her voice hardly contains her excitement.

He smiles and lifts the canteen to his lips. He notices the excitement drain from her as he does.

"Your hand," she frowns.

It's only then that he notices he is lifting the canteen with his burnt hand, the hand which he couldn't even move without piercing pain hours before.

As he looks at the bandage in disbelief, Rey is already moving, and is back with the medical supplies in what seems like an instant. She kneels next to his sitting body, leaning back on her heels.

"Let me see your hand, I need to redress both your wounds anyway."

"Rey, you've done enough. You just saved our lives. You should rest," Kylo isn't used to people like Rey, with all her endless compassion.

"Without you, I would've never thought of a vaporator," she takes his hand in hers like it's easy, like she had never feared his touch once, "So, no, I think I have some time to make sure your wounds don't fester and infect your bloodstream and kill you. I need you."

Kylo freezes at her last three words. Rey notices the awkward air she created as she unwraps his hand, but knows if she opens her mouth again she will just make it worse so she lets the awkwardness settle over them.

It's broken as soon as she uncovers his hand fully. The char is all but gone, leaving angry looking, bright red skin underneath it. Her eyebrows knit together and her eyes narrow, skeptical of how much better it looks.

"Do you always heal quickly? Is that part of your power?" Rey asks as she inspects his hand, looking for an explanation. She had read about increased healing times for force-sensitives in the Jedi texts, but had never seen it before.

"Not that I know of," Kylo replies, just as confused as she is as he looks down at his hand.

She sticks her chin out, thinking.

She moves quickly to his upper body, swinging her body over to his side. Her torso presses against him as she reaches over the expanse of his shoulders to untie the silk bandage, and he inhales sharply at the touch. She peels away the covering and looks to the circular saber wound. It had already scarred over perfectly, settling in a shade just slightly lighter than his already pale skin tone. The scar tissue looked years old already.

Her head cocks to the side as she looks between his hand and his chest.

"Are you sure?" her eyes flick up to his.

"Yes," he stares back at her wholeheartedly.

"Is it this place?" her eyes dart around as she moves back in front of him, grabbing the gauze and salve from her kit.

"Maybe," he says, distractedly, his thoughts turning to her, to the way the force had picked up when they touched. It was slight, but it was there. Maybe it wasn't his powers that were responsible for this, maybe it was hers. He keeps it to himself as he watches her bite down on the gauze to rip it.

She holds her hand out, palm up, when the materials are ready, a silent entreaty. He knows what she means, and puts his hand in hers again, and she gets to work.

That night, they both fall asleep listening to the other's breathing coming from separate craters, waiting for something to happen. Nothing does.

* * *

When Kylo wakes, Rey's already up, talking in a low voice to R2 so as not to wake him. When she notices him stir, she throws a ration packet his way. It lands on top of him in the crater. His head pops up and she immediately bursts into laughter.

"What?" he means it to come out playfully, but he is unpracticed in levity, so his usual harshness bleeds into it.

Rey lets out a final chuckle, "I guess I've just never seen your hair like that."

His hand comes up to his hair, following it as it veers completely off to one side, sticking straight up into the air sideways. He runs his hand through it a few times until it looks semi-normal again and smiles sleepily up at Rey.

Her face changes shape as he smiles at her, falling and looking away.

"We should get moving quickly," she says, all business.

"Yeah, okay," his smile disintegrates almost instantly, failing to understand what he had done to make her change so suddenly.

She stands up and tries not to look at him. Everything about this seemed easy, where it had once been so incredibly difficult. She was reminded of the mornings she would have with her friends on the _Falcon_ , waking up together, learning each other's routines.

Rey always put toothpaste on Rose's toothbrush for her, knowing Rose's proclivity for sleeping in, saving her some time in her rush. When she and Poe would have piloting shifts together, he would always leave Rey a mug of caf, knowing she would be the next one up after him, to wake her up before their long stints. She remembers BB-8 slowing down just for her, allowing her to touch his antenna good morning, as he chased Finn around, trying to keep Finn on time for his own shift.

Where are her friends now? In peril somewhere she can't help them? While she sits smiling at the man who wants to kill them all? Worse, while she sits in something like happiness next to him? She looks down at her bracelet, still glowing blue, and she can almost feel their sense of betrayal. She runs it back up to her forearm and tries to conceal it, more from herself than him.

She moves to the knapsack, but Kylo moves quickly ahead of her, getting to it first. He tries to put it on, but it is awkward, as he forgets to adjust the straps to his much larger frame.

Rey smiles again despite herself.

"Here, let me just…" she reaches her hands out to him to help.

"I can do it," he jerks away, confused by her sudden changes in body language.

He struggles, one arm in a loop, to find the other. The arm not in the loop reaches behind him several times, never reaching the other strap. He huffs out when he looks back to her, totally enraptured by this wrestling match he was having with the knapsack. Her smile widens and she reaches out again. This time, he lets her touch him.

"Have you carried your own stuff before, ever?" she goads him as she easily loosens each straps metal adjusters, widening them to accommodate him, before clasping it the straps together on his chest, which he had finally once again covered with a shirt.

She looks up at him and gives a curt nod when she's done.

She turns around but he grabs her arm, lightly. He feels like he might lose this if he doesn't, this lightness, this moment, like he had before.

She can't look back at him, she can't turn back to him. Instead, she looks down to the ground between them, not giving anything up.

They stand in this tableau for a moment, before he releases her arm, knowing that this wasn't the way, that he couldn't strong arm the moment into staying.

She starts walking forward, still not looking back. She fights the urge to caress the spot where his silent plea had burned into her arm.

* * *

Her thirst gets the best of her, and she stops and turns back to him after a few hours of working up the courage to face him again. She walks behind him to the pack and unclasps the canteen, drinking deeply from it and wiping her brow as she does.

She extends the canteen out to him, a show of good faith, but as she does, her beacon lights his face in blue, having slipped down from where she had been keeping it hidden further up on her forearm.

Her stomach clenches as she fights the urge to hide it immediately, knowing if she does, he will suspect something.

Instead, she lets it shine as she brings her hand back down. As she turns away from him, she touches it and shimmies the light back on her wrist, until the glow is hidden against her body.

As she does, Kylo watches her, but she doesn't notice, her thoughts stinging back to her friends, again, hoping they are okay.

"You're thinking of them, aren't you?" he cuts in.

"Who?" she plays dumb.

"Your….friends," he says the word, trying to force down his disdain.

Rey's face jumps to his and cloaks itself in confusion, desperately trying not to give anything away.

"The binary beacon. It belonged to Leia. I used to wear it," Rey breathes in, _of course_ , "It's linking you to them, right?"

Her eyes narrow, hating to hear him talk about them, even if it was indirectly. He had no right, not after what he had done to Finn and Poe. Not after his organization had taken Paige from Rose.

"Are they coming for you?" he cocks his head to the side, trying to hide his fear that they could come and take her from him at any moment.

Rey reddens and looks down. She gives herself away.

"They don't know you're here, do they?" he is almost excited by the prospect.

Rey takes a deep breath and exhales loudly, and she returns her gaze to his, an emerging wrath brimming beneath her pupils.

"You left them? That's interesting," his voice is reminiscent of the one she heard so many years ago on Starkiller. So sure, so arrogant, before he was aware of her and her power.

"They left _me_ ," it escapes her, angry at his insinuation that she would ever abandon her friends.

The part of him that delights in pain picks up and he pushes when he knows he shouldn't. He lowers his head, slightly, to look into her eyes more deeply as she stares daggers into him.

"They left you," he repeats, "Why did they leave you?" his voice drops as he continues searching her eyes.

She looks back at him defiantly, thankful for the interlude this place caused in their force bond, thankful she isn't linked to him now. This is the Kylo she is used to, so shrewd and scheming.

She shakes her head, no, a silent appeal to get him to stop, to drop it. They were off limits to him.

He thinks he knows though, thinks they left her for the same reason he had been discarded by all those he once loved, "What we are, the power we wield, it scares people." He pauses, "Were they scared of you?"

She blinks, and in an instant, her gaze softens towards him. An understanding washes over her. This isn't the Kylo she knew on Starkiller. Or maybe it was, and she just didn't see past his self-imposed facade before, see deeper to the pain and fear that hid behind it.

"Not everyone is like that, Kylo," her voice is soft.

"You're wrong," he retorts, noticing something like pity rising in her eyes. He preferred the anger.

She wants to reach up to him, to run her fingers the length of his scar. But she doesn't.

"What's been done to you…by the people you trusted..."

"Stop," his voice is blunt, almost emotionless, "I don't need to hear your melancholy theory of how I got this way, or you trying to justify and explain away my decision to turn to the darkside to make yourself feel better about whatever this is."

He moves past her, breaking their closeness, and into the room in front of them.

Rey's shoulders raise instinctively, like a defense mechanism. She follows him out of the hallway, but waits until he gets to the other side of the room to speak again.

"Was it your decision?"

Kylo's breath hitches as if her words physically accosted him. He can't look at her and instead, turns to the wall behind him, inspecting it closely.

Rey exhales into the air above her, looking at the ceiling above. Her head tilts at what she sees.

Exposed erratically across the ceiling, peeking out from under the cooled globule lava, pieces of metal beams jut out. They seem to funnel into the next hallway.

Rey, totally entranced by these sudden structures, forgets she is in the middle of a discussion and starts to follow them.

When Kylo finally turns around from the wall, she is gone. He looks to R2 who beeps a small invitation to Kylo before disappearing after Rey.

When he catches up to her, her movements are turbulent, changing direction slightly every few steps. He studies her for a moment, before following her unwavering gaze above her.

He stops.

The caves around them seem to be slowly disintegrating away, being erased slowly by chiseled hallways of metal. He looks behind him, from where they just came from for confirmation, and he gets it.

As she looks up at a rectangular light exposed above them, still glowing red, he rushes past her, dropping the pack. His body slightly brushes her as he does, lifting her fugue state.

"This is…" Rey begins.

"Not possible," Kylo finishes.

"What could have made this?"

Kylo remains silent, the answer formulating in his head, fearing what saying it outloud would do to her.

They continue to look up, admiring the angular curves of their stumbled upon surroundings, not noticing how close they are getting to one another.

He backs into her, softly, without realizing, but she doesn't move. Instead, they stand there back to back, both looking up, silently relishing in being this close.

"Should we keep going?" Rey asks, totally in disbelief at the transformation around her.

"I don't think there are a lot of other options," Kylo responds, his voice just as astonished.

Her can feel her slight nod against his back.

They stand there for another moment, neither of them wanting to fracture this instance of vague intimacy.

But they do, eventually. They have to. Kylo picks the pack backup and restraps it to him, this time without her help.

She helps clasps the canteen back to it and starts out in front of him.

"Wait," he stops her, "I think it's my turn to lead."

She blinks and squints at him, blurring his edges slightly in her vision. She wants to launch in to him, to remind him of who gave him his scar, to remind him that she is just as capable, but she is tired of fighting with Kylo. She gives and imperceptible nod and steps back, allowing him to step in front.

They start walking again, a weight of anticipation settling in both their stomachs as they do.

* * *

They make camp that night in a room totally man made. No more traces of the natural cave formations exist. It reminds her, slightly, of the rooms she once saw in the wreckage of _The Inflictor,_ an Imperial Star Destroyer she only dared to venture into a few times on Jakku, dodging its feral inhabitants to look desperately for parts. The dark walls are stark against the rectangular lights that glow red above them, lining the top of the room, still glowing impossibly in this deserted place.

Or, at least, she hoped it was deserted.

She helps him to take the pack off, eager to restart her vaporator operation before bed, but also eager to have a chance to redress his wounds. She tells herself the tight feeling of excitement in her stomach is just for the vaporator, trying to ignore the feeling of his hand in hers.

She starts to tent the tarp as he grabs the blankets. She notices from the corner of her eye his struggle to decide how to place their temporary sleeping mats. At first, he places them far apart, before deciding to move them closer, then very close, then farther away. After his fifth movement, she can't contain her tiny laugh anymore.

"Is something funny?" he still holds a bit of contempt for their discussion earlier, but there is some lightness behind his voice now.

"No, not at all," she responds, focused on her work, "The way you have it is fine."

He looks down to the blankets and is almost surprised at how close they are, how close she has just given her permission to be to him. He thinks maybe she can't see, that she's too distracted by her work to know what she has just agreed to.

"Are you sure?" he immediately regrets the question. He should just let it be.

"Are you not?" she shoots back, glancing at him as she wraps the plastic tube around the tarp.

He settles as she finishes up the vaporator and turns the oxygen tank on. She scratches the bridge of her nose, tickled by sweat, before returning to the knapsack to grab the medical kit.

"Sit," Rey commands. He obliges immediately, knowing she would get her way eventually if he were to try to talk back to her demand.

She comes and sits opposite to him, and his hand is already out for her to take. She smiles at the routine they've quickly established. She unwraps the old bandage to find silvery new skin underneath. The burn was only slightly less than two days old, and it was completely devoid of the nasty blistering and leaking her own burns would have at that stage of healing.

She thinks back to the hot metal littering Jakku, to her youthful carelessness which would forget, and touch, and burn. The memories of her enraged skin, welting, bursting, scarring appear in her mind, and his. He slowly tightens his grip around her hand and pulls it closer to his body, extending her arm as he does. He twists it, slightly, to see the underside of her arm, to see the healed scar of the burn he had just seen mark her in her memory.

She realizes that what she had just remembered had been transferred to him, somehow, and tries, hollowly, to get her arm back. He tightens and she stops her false retreat.

Slowly, he brings his face down to her scar, which runs the length of her inner arm. He runs his full lips against it, brushing the length of it. He doesn't press his lips to it, like a kiss. Instead, he skims it, running from just below her wrist to her elbow, his eyes locked onto hers as he does.

Rey's eyes widen, but she doesn't move. The only distance between their two faces now is the expanse of her upper arm. She fights her urge to look away, strangling down her timidness at his touch.

She braces for him to smother her, but instead, he moves away, slowly, and places her arm back down on her sitting thigh.

She starts breathing again, but doesn't move as he gets up.

He walks to the blankets, and once again repositions them. This time, he lays them together, side by side, before walking back to her.

He extends his hand out to her sitting body. She looks between his outstretched hand and his face. This time, she takes it.

He leads her over to their makeshift bed and she lies herself down on her back. He settles next to her, mirroring her position. They both look up to the ceiling above. Her hand extends down between them and finds his, holding his hand in hers once more. They fall asleep like this, just holding hands, but it's enough for both of them.

* * *

Rey wakes before he does, another new tradition, new routine, starting. They had shifted in the night to face each other, but they hadn't unclasped their hands from one another. When her vision clears from sleep and she sees his sleeping form in front of her, her muscles tense for a split second before she remembers this Kylo, not the one from her nightmares. She reaches up with her other hand and brushes his hair, weighed down by sweat, out of his face, tucking it behind his ear.

The moisture of his sweat on her hand reminds her of something, and she carefully slides out of his grip and heads to her vaporator, which had been running throughout the night. Water overflows from the portable bladder to the floor below and she curses herself for not being more mindful.

As she deconstructs the vaporator, shutting off the oxygen and repacking the bag, the ground around them starts to shake.

A small "no" escapes Rey and she starts shoving everything indiscriminately into the bag.

Kylo wakes at the tremors to find the space next to him where Rey had been empty. His heart lurches. He turns around to yell for her, but before he can form the words, she has his hand, pulling him up from his slumber.

He grabs the blankets as she leads him forward, into the hall ahead. R2 lights the way already, peeved at their sluggishness.

Behind them, they hear a crash, but don't look back, knowing the beams they had been admiring the day before were coming down.

R2 speeds up, and so do they, Rey's hand still dragging Kylo's half sleeping body.

They darts through hallways and rooms, each one growing larger, but they can't notice, can't stop for fear of collapse.

Suddenly, they run out of a hallway, expecting to find just another room, but instead, a large expansive chamber spreads out before them. R2 stops, causing a pile up behind him. The room seems to go on forever, it is huge and black but elegantly designed, with vaulted ceilings that ascended up and over them. The trembling stops as soon as they step foot in this new discovery, and Rey's grip loosens on Kylo's, shocked.

She walks out, basking in the excess space after being so cooped up in the endless cave system for days. After a few paces, she realizes the floor in the middle of the room ends abruptly and gives way, with a walkway extending up and above the cistern. She edges up closer to it and looks down into the chiseled pit. Fifty or so meters below a vast pool of magma, angry and malevolent, churns, running as a lake beneath the room.

She looks back at Kylo, expecting him to be inspecting the room as curiously as she was, but he stands in the same place she left him, tousled blankets still balled in his hand. He looks directly at her.

She knows he's figured it out.

"What is this place?" she asks again, for the third time. This time, though, she knows he will have the answer.

"Lord Vader's Lair."

"Lair?!" she repeats, dubiously, before looking to R2. "He was a Super Villian," she talks to the droid, joking as if the lair was the thing that really pushed him over the edge, and not the mass murders.

"How long have you known?" she looks back to Kylo, but her voice has no hint of resentment or anger, just curiosity.

"I suspected since the walls started changing. I'd heard about a castle on Mustafar, I'd even looked for it a few times with my Knights after…" he looks to R2, "After the Temple, but I couldn't find anything. I figured it lapsed into the lava pits in disrepair after Lord Vader's death."

She steps away from the lava lake and back towards Kylo.

"This is what it wanted us to see. The memories, they were Vader's, trapped here. Why here?" she looks around as she talks, trying to figure it out.

"This is where he become Lord Vader. This is where he and Kenobi dueled."

Rey's face scrunches up, trying to piece together the history of Vader from the fragments she had been afforded. She knew of him only as a fearful nightmare before all of this, as the prototype for Kylo Ren, for the monster in a mask. But now, there was so much more to grapple with. She tries to piece things together as quickly as she can, struggling to decode what the caves were throwing at them.

Kylo starts to put it together before she does.

"You never told me exactly what the caves showed you when you saw you Obi-Wan," he says, needing just a little more information before drawing his conclusions.

Rey shakes her head, unable to describe it fully, but answers the best she can, "His mistakes."

Kylo takes a step towards her, his curiosity fully piqued.

She notices and continues, "Luke, in his first lesson, his only lesson, he told me that it was a Jedi who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader. Now I know, he was talking about Obi-Wan."

Kylo shakes his head, "Obi-Wan didn't create Darth Vader, Sidious did."

"Like Snoke created you? Or was it your blood turning against you that created Kylo Ren?"

Kylo turns his head away from her, unable to stomach what she said.

Rey continues, trying to justify her words, "Obi-Wan knew Anakin was different, knew he felt the pull of the darkside, but he kept pushing the light only, ignoring everything else. He couldn't see past the code, see past the Jedi, to help him. If that's what made Vader, if sticking so closely to an ancient order was enough to throw the Galaxy into this never ending struggle, maybe Luke was right."

"Maybe he was right how?" Kylo still looks away.

"He told me the Jedi Order needed to end."

At her words, Kylo's head snaps up, looking back to Rey, challenging her, "Seems...uncharacteristic."

"You changed him. What he did to you, because he thought he was protecting the light...it broke him."

Rey moves closer to Kylo, closing the distance between them slowly.

"You told me once to let old things die. Maybe we should. Maybe that's what it's trying to tell us. Snoke used your two warring sides to get to you. He used the complete rejection of the dark by the Jedi to infiltrate your mind, and make you scared to ask for help when you needed it. And in retaliation, you grew to hate the light instead, to try to snuff all of it out of you," she moves closer, until she is right in front of him. She reaches out and skims his lower torso with her hand. His abs contract under her touch until she finds them. The dice. She settles her hand above them while she talks.

"I used to think that you hated Han, you hated your father. But now I know you didn't. You loved him more than anything in this whole Galaxy. He was everything to you. And you thought by killing him, you would kill Ben. But you didn't. He only grew more."

She feels his breathing stop as he holds his breath.

"What if we didn't run from either side? What if we didn't torture ourselves with the absolution of these two factions we didn't create? That the force didn't even create? That some people long ago decided on? What if we got comfortable in the tension that lies between the two?"

A tear runs down his cheek and she brings her other hand up to catch it. She doesn't know how he will react, doesn't know what he will do with everything she's just thrown at him. She waits.

"I don't think this place will let us kill the past," he backs up and out of her grasp, before walking around her. Her mind races at this sudden role reversal.

She waits a moment, letting the questions slow down in her mind, before talking again, "What do you mean? What do you think this place is telling you?" She turns around to look at him as she pries for answers.

He doesn't respond, instead, he stays looking away from her into the length of the room in front of them.

She remembers, then, that they hadn't seen the same things in the caves. Maybe the force wasn't trying to tell them the same thing. Maybe they had different things to learn.

"You never told me what it showed you, exactly, when you saw Padme and Anakin again."

As he turns to look at her, something in front of him hisses like water at its boiling point, masking something like running footsteps, but neither of them are moving.

The room in front of them flashes into blue. Kylo backs up, finding Rey and taking her hand, but neither of them stop looking at the blue mist ahead. A mass materializes, before manifesting into a clearly defined body.

And for the second time, Rey sees Vader without his mask.

* * *

 **DUN DUN DUN. I'm so excited for the next chapter. It is actually the scene I built the whole story around and I'm just so excited to finally show you guys!**

 **And again, a huge thank you to every one who has stuck by this slow burn this long. Y'all are the real MVPs. We're almost there!**


	15. Chapter 15

The blue mist scatters quickly, too quickly, leaving just Anakin, standing on the platform. He is facing Rey and Kylo, but stands further down the expansive corridor.

Anakin is looking at them. His eyes are different, underlined by deep bags sunken into his face, the shadows of Mustafar darkening them. Rey inhales sharply, the stark contrast between this hollow man, and the handsome one she had seen so happy at his own wedding causing dread to simmer in her.

This vision bears none of the hallmarks of the other cave memories. There was no blue tint to it, no blurring around his edges. Anakin stands solid, and something about how clear he is, how real he looks, causes Kylo's free hand to settle on his saber, and his other hand to tighten around Rey's.

Their eyes lock, Kylo and Anakin. A look of knowing flashes across the to-be Vader's eyes, causing Kylo's muscles to snag, his greatest hero looking at him with recognition. Rey knows, though, that Anakin isn't looking at Kylo, that he is looking past him, and instinctively looks behind them.

Padme. Padme is running towards them from behind. Rey looks back to Anakin and realizes he is running now too. Kylo's opposite hand is still on his saber when he feels Rey's grip loosen. He looks to her and realizes. They let go of each other's hands and both step back, allowing his grandparents to run into each other's arms where they had just stood.

Padme is dressed in something reminiscent of what Rey might wear, subdued earth tones, her darkly braided hair cascading down her back and shoulders. She is crying. Both Kylo and Rey's bodies thrust back at the sight of her tears. Anakin buries her face into his chest as they embrace, but her sobs are unmistakable. This vision is different in more ways than one.

When Anakin and Padme pull apart, Rey notices the swell in her belly before Kylo does.

Kylo is too focused on her face, on her tears, to notice. The way her face twists, her eyes reach out, even the way she tries to swallow back her emotions, they're all his mother, trying to hide her vulnerability from him when his father would leave or the weight of the Republic weighed too heavy, trying to be strong.

He had never seen pictures of Padme Amidala outside of her royal Queen regalia, heavy white makeup hiding her true face. He didn't think any existed. But here she was, in front of him for the third time, his grandmother. Beautiful, kind, but sad.

"I was so worried about you,' Padme speaks first. Both Kylo and Rey lean in to hear her. "Obi Wan told me terrible things," Padme's face is edging on terror, on disbelief, looking into her husband's eyes.

"What things?" Anakin steps forward as Padme steps back.

"He said, you've turned to the dark side", her beautiful face contorts, "that you...killed _younglings_."

Rey's face shoots to Kylo on the other side of this apparition.

"Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me," Anakin's voice is strong, detached even.

Padme shakes her head, "He cares about us."

"Us?" he turns fully to her, it is his turn to edge on disbelief.

"He knows, he wants to help you." She searches his face, but a sly smile has overtaken it. Something sinister boils beneath the surface, and Padme tries to smooth it out with her words, "Anakin, all I want is your love."

"Love won't save you Padme. Only my new powers can do that," his menacing expression doesn't let up, but his eyes are genuine.

"At what cost? You're a good person, don't do this," the distance between them has grown and it is as her whole body is shaking in grief.

"I won't lose you like I lost my mother. I am becoming more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of, and I'm doing it for you, to protect you."

Hope fades from her face, causing the room to constrict.

Padme approaches him, a last ditch effort to make him understand, "Come away with me. Help me raise our child,"

Kylo straightens, _our child_ , before his eyes settle on Padme's stomach. Luke and Leia, that's them, held together within their mother just a few feet from him. His mother in her mother.

Padme's hands come up to his face, bringing her to him, "Leave everything else behind while we still can."

Rey's eyes shoot from Padme towards Kylo but he is already looking at her, his plea to her in the throne room playing here, years before that moment, but playing so differently.

"Don't you see? We don't have to run away anymore. I have brought peace to the Republic. I am more powerful than the Chancellor. I can overthrow him. And together, you and I can rule the Galaxy, make things the way we want them to be." Anakin's words are like ice in Rey's veins, the power he so craved, so wanted, he wanted with her. Kylo doesn't stop looking at Rey, as his grandparents' images play as an echo between them. An echo of their life.

Padme's muscles start to seize in confusion, Anakin's words causing her to recoil slightly, before stepping back, her face drained of all recognition, of all of the surety she had ever had in her life.

Padme's head starts to shake, "I don't believe what I'm hearing. Obi Wan was right, you've changed," the last word comes out strained, almost in a whisper, thinned out past her growing sorrow.

"I don't want to hear anymore about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me. Don't you turn against me." There is a danger to his tone that causes Kylo and Rey to unlock and turn their attention back to the scene.

"I don't know you anymore. Anakin, you're breaking my heart. You're going down a path I can't follow." Tears stream down Padme's face. It is Kylo's turn to replay the throne room, his turn to think about Rey's words there: _Don't do this Ben. Please don't go this way._

"Because of Obi-Wan?"

"Because of what you've done! What you plan to do. Stop, stop now, come back. I love you."

Something changes in Anakin's face, and Rey knows that he is no longer Anakin in that very moment. She knows that Anakin is gone now. Vader has taken over, unimpeded by the nightmarish black mask that had come to represent everything within him. Her mind shuffles back to the interrogation room where she had first laid eyes on Kylo, not a creature in a mask, but a man.

"LIAR!" the voice of Vader, deep, terrifying, rings out into the room, reverberating off of everything. He raises his hand up towards Padme, and both Kylo and Reys' faces drop in horror when they realize what he is doing.

"No, no" Padme's hands raise to her throat as the force choke deepens.

Padme's body stretches up into the air, trying desperately to unhook the invisible hands from around her throat. Her eyes are still locked on Vader, welled with tears.

Rey's hand stretches out to Padme, as if to help, as if to stop this, forgetting she is a ghost.

She almost doesn't hear it, in her shock, the sound of Kylo's saber igniting. The heat flashes next to her for a moment, but she can't rip herself from Padme's twitching body, her life slowly draining. She hears the deep roar that escapes Kylo almost as an echo, as if it started somewhere deep in the caves and was only now reaching her.

Next to her, Kylo positions himself between Vader and Padme, his weapon throwing more red shadow on Vader's face. There is no sound in Kylo's head, only a dull ringing, like tinnitus after head trauma. Everything else, his scream, Padme's waning breath, Vader's yell, they're all muffled under the throbbing pitch. Kylo positions his weapon, and slashes his saber wildly through Vader's ghost, trying to stop this memory, trying to rewrite history, but it doesn't stop. The image wavers under the heat of his saber, but doesn't disappear. He bisects and slices Vader, the deep sounds coming from within him all righteous fury. His eyes sting with the rage his impotent strikes can't relay.

Padme sputters from behind him, short, horrible gasps contorting her pregnant body before Vader releases her. Rey starts to run to Padme's body as she crumbles. Rey slides to her knees try to catch Padme before she hits the ground, but before she can reach her, Padme's unmoving image flickers out. Rey is on her knees, hands bent out in front of her, waiting to cradle the matriarch of the Skywalker line, the woman who had died so many years before Rey's own birth, but whose legacy was inextricably intertwined with Rey's own.

Vader is gone too, and all the ambient noise of the room floods back to Kylo. He hears Rey's stuttered breathing behind him. He hears his saber clang to the floor. He falls to his knees, the dull ache of the hard ground resounding up through his knees.

They both take a moment, not believing what they just had witnessed. Not knowing why. They are both on their knees now, backs to each other.

There was no doubt now, why this was the memory that played in the innermost sanctum of Vader's lair. This was the most important one, the one that made him Vader, the one that haunted his soul. It was a scar replaying itself into eternity.

"You didn't know?" Rey sounds faraway, shock still coursing through her, her arms still outstretched for the woman she would never know.

"No. I was only ever told she died in childbirth," Kylo says slowly, still processing.

She turns to him and sees his broad back turned to her. She doesn't know what to do. The weight of his lineage seems to settle on his shoulders. It is something she could never understand, the inherited pain of generations.

As she watches, his body starts to buckle under the weight, jerking down to the ground. His face is in his hands, silencing a scream.

She is to him in an instant, though she can't remember pushing herself up or running to him. All she knows is she is now standing in front of him. She touches the back of his head, lightly, with the full palm of her hand, letting him know she is there through his tightly closed eyes. In an instant, he buries his face into her abdomen, screaming the pain of his ancestors into her stomach. She runs her fingers through his hair and his hands unclench and come up behind her, resting on her lower back. Slowly, his scream turns into deep sobs. Her hands still in his hair and she comes down to kneel with him, both praying at an altar they don't yet understand.

Her face is below his, her torso being so much shorter, but she feels bigger.

He is looking to the ground. Orbs of tears gather in his long eyelashes, but they don't fall. As he breathes in, she hears him whispering, but she can't make out the words. He is repeating something, though, over and over. She leans her forehead against his, extending her body up a little to close the distance between the two, to try to hear him better.

" _If you follow your thoughts out to conclusion, it will take us to a place we cannot go."_

She breaks from him and takes his face into her hands, "What?"

"I thought, I thought there could be a different way. But now I know there can't be. This is...this is how it ends. This is how it will always end." He isn't talking to her, not really, he is stuck in a loop, talking to himself.

Rey shakes her head slightly between his two eyes, trying to figure out what he means.

"I don't, I don't understand."

He shakes his head free of her hands, not being able to stand her soft touch, "That is who I am. That is what I'll do to you. You have to get away from me. I will destroy you. I will destroy myself. I will destroy everything."

There is a pause between them. Kylo can't look at her.

"You won't," her voice is quiet but so sure.

"How can you say that? I am Vader's one true heir. Everything I've done has to become more like him. The blood that ran through him runs through me."

"You are not Vader."

Her words sting him and he looks up into her eyes, "I built my life around him, to have an ounce of the power he possessed. I've killed. I've killed _younglings_ ," the word comes out strained like his grandmother before him, "I've supported the annihilation of an entire star system. How am I different?"

She knew all of this, but to hear him say it, to hear this confession, makes her pause. She looks to him, his eyes pleading with hers, willing her to believe him and leave him.

"You haven't lost _him_ yet," Kylo knows exactly who Rey is talking about when she says him.

"I'm not Ben anymore."

"I know. I know you're not. But he's still a part of you, a part of you that you cannot lose." She gestures to where Vader stood a moment ago, "He lost Anakin. Don't lose Ben."

Kylo shakes his head, "You're the only thing left tying him to me."

"I don't think that's true."

"I don't think you would know. I thought I had killed everyone that linked me to him. I thought they were all gone, but then there was you, in my bedroom, the night after my mother died. You."

He is quiet for a moment as she looks down.

He continues, "I can't stop it now. I've gone too far. I wanted so badly to be him, but now I know what becoming him means and I want to stop it, but I can't. I need you safe, and that will always mean that you need to be as far away from me as you can get. I thought there might be a way, for this, for us, but there isn't."

"Who says?"

He stiffens at the question, catching him off guard, "History. This Galaxy. You, once. What we are, they don't mix. They dance around each other, but never meet. It can't be night and day at the same time."

"Look up, can you tell if it is night or day, Kylo?"

He looks at her, his head tilting slightly, before she speaks again.

"History doesn't get to decide for us. It doesn't have to be like that. There can just be us," the sureness does not leave her voice.

She extends her body up to kiss him, but he turns away.

"Rey, wait, you don't understand what this means, you don't understand what I am. If you did wouldn't be doing this."

Her eyebrows knit together as she speaks, "No. I don't have any illusions, Kylo. I know who you are, I know what you've done. I know there's still good in you, I feel it like a burn when I'm close to you," her hand settles just above his heart, just above the circular scar she gave him days earlier, "But I also know that there's unbelievable darkness there too. Darkness that can't be erased or kissed away. A darkness that's a part of you, always. But it's a part of _you_ , and that's who I want. I am not afraid of you. I trust you. I don't want to run from this anymore.'

"You don't have to do this. You don't have to prove anything with this."

"That's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because I want to. I want you, all of you."

His self-control breaks at her words, the words he had so desperately wanted to hear since he came to know her. He grabs her just as he had done days prior when she had first kissed him. His fingers dig too deeply into her skin, wanting to feel through to her bone below, and she gasps at the quickness. His mouth is too quickly on her mouth, then her neck, then her chest. He wants all of her immediately, wants to devour every piece of her, wants to absorb her into himself.

The force around them swells in bliss at this development, this coupling it had worked so hard to make, and it washes them in it. He takes a breath feeling the hum of it traveling between them effortlessly. He takes his hands off of her body and raises them up to her face, grasping her chin softly. Rey bristles at the sudden change, but finds that both speeds excite her endlessly.

He looks deeply into her, staring past her eyes into her being. It is intense, but Rey stares back, tired of looking away from what she wants, tired of denying herself this.

He wants to take her fully and vigorously, but he knows that is not the way he will experience Rey, and he wants to experience her, not his own desire radiating back at him. If this is his one moment, he wants them to be here together.

When he slows, her hands come up beneath his tunic to skim his torso, to trace him, this time. She helps him lift it above his head and his chest is exposed to her once more in this place. Slowly, she runs her hands from scar to scar, reading him like a map. Each battle, each fall, each fragment buried deep inside him, she smooths it out. He closes his eyes and imagines her healing each one, her touch radiating down into him, until she gets to the first one she caused. She redraws it, starting from his chest, all the way up, the deadened scar tissue tender under her touch. He opens his eyes as she gets to his face, watching her as she focuses on her task.

Their eyes meet and a raw pressure settles in both their stomachs. Kylo moves first and undoes the belt that keeps her tunic draped to her. Her shoulders are the first part of her to pop free. As he helps the rest of the tunic to fall, he presses his lips there first. Rey's body stiffens as she feels his lips against her.

His hands find their way to her coiled breast band. He stops and brings his face up to look at her, making sure she is still okay with this. She nods, running her fingers through the hair above his ears as she does. He unwraps her slowly, something rising in him, until her breasts are uncovered, soft and pale, untouched by the Jakku sun. A thin bead of sweat runs down her chest, unencumbered by the material he just removed. The sight of her like this makes his cock twitch.

It takes all the self-control in his body to not palm both of her tits into his hands, to feel her nipples harden in his touch. He wants to take his time with this, to feel all of her. He tries to hide the tremble in his hand by touching her side. He starts at her bare hip, feeling the slight curve of her. He realizes he has never felt anything softer than her skin. He glides his hand up her side, until he hits her ribs, feeling each bone move under his palm. He stops as soon as his hand reaches the soft mound of her breast.

He brings his gaze up from her chest to her, and the way she looks at him, with wonder, anticipation, heat, makes him shake. He leans down, his eyes not leaving hers. Instinctively, she leans back, to allow him room, but he keeps her close with his hand on her lower back. His head angles down to her nipples and she closes her eyes, ready to feel his hot mouth on her. Instead, she feels cold wisp against her skin. Her eyes pop open.

She looks down to see his lips, full, hovering just above her, as he lightly blows on each nipple. His cool breath mingling with the beaded sweat causes her nipples to pebble in this impossibly warm place. As they harden, she leans back, away from him, as if the sensation is too much, but he tightens his hold on the small of her back and keeps her there. An almost pained whimper escapes her and he smiles.

That small moan awakens something in him, playing like an opus. He needs to hear it again and again. The slight tremble in his body is quieted, and something course and natural in him rises. His boldness returns. It is as if a switch was pulled, and he wants to tease her endlessly until her cunt is dripping for him, until he can smell her want. He pulls his head away from her breasts, and comes up a bit to kiss her neck. He hears another sound escape her and he grins this time, his teeth baring themselves against her soft flesh. He decides to work his way down slowly, to taste each bead of sweat on her, until he reaches her apex, wet and ready. But as he continues to kiss her neck, he feels her hand on his thigh.

She is teasing now too.

He stops, his lips pressed against her, as he feels her hand move curiously up his leg. He slides his head down to the crook of her shoulder, and a feeling of trepidation awakens in him. No one had ever touched him there before. No one touched him much at all, ever. To have her here now, touching him in such a way, it almost short-circuits his senses. He steadies his breathing, his head on her shoulder, and tries to clamp down on the anxiety.

Her fingers skitter up, until she feels his outline, impossibly hard against his pants. She stops, knowing from the stories she overheard from drunkard offworlders on Jakku that this is how it worked, but still nervous at the very real indication of his manhood underneath her fingertips. After a moment of listening to his breathing, she moves her hand farther up, tracing the thick outline of him, curving her palm around him through the fabric. She can feel the low throb of his pulse against her skin. She tightens her grip, pressing in to feel him more.

It is too much for Kylo and he grabs her wrists, perhaps too hard, causing her to gasp in surprise. They kneel, a mirror of how they were days ago during his tantrum, her wrists in his hands between them. Her face constricts in confusion, but there is also tenderness, not knowing what she did wrong.

He realizes the effect his instinctual impulse had on her and slowly lifts her wrists up and kisses where he had grabbed, softly, the graze of his lips on her skin reminding her of the night he had traced her. She breathes out, finally, when his eyes meet hers, telling her silently she hadn't done anything wrong.

She feels her pulse everywhere in her body as he looks down at her, her wrist still pressed against his lips. All she can hear is the sound of her own beating heart. His lips come off her wrists and find their way to her lips. He leans his weight into her, pushing her back, leaning her impossibly back to the floor behind them with his hand on her lower back to guide her. Her body contorts, her breasts pushing up into the air, settling so slightly, their movement making Kylo's cock jump. Her abs engage, her calves and feet are still under her, and she feels her muscles stretching under the pressure. He presses her against the floor and he feels her struggle under him to free the lower parts of her legs from underneath her.

When she does, she has no choice but to open her legs on either side of him, allowing his body to press against hers, covering her. She feels the full length of him now against her and his breath hitches in her ear as it makes contact with her, before he settles his mouth on hers once more.

Once she centers herself in her new position under him, her hands immediately find their way to his hair, before running down his back, drawing him in closer. She moves slowly, feeling the way his muscles move under his skin, firm and relentless. Her hand travels down his expansive back, feeling the lines of him, before finding the hemline of his pants. She flattens her palms and slides them between his skin and his pants, tugging them slightly as she does, a message.

He immediately props himself up into a push-up position above her.

"You're _sure_?" he doesn't believe this is real. Doesn't believe that Rey would ever want to do this with him. Doesn't believe, even now, even after feeling her writhe beneath him, that this could be something she could possibly want.

Her hands come up to find his face, and settle on either side of it. "I've never been so sure about anything in my life."

He moves quickly, until he is standing between her legs and hooks his fingers onto either side of his waistband before dragging them down. She moves to do the same on the floor, but the sight of his cock as it escapes its confinement stops her.

She had caught glimpses of Poe and Finn and the other human men in the Resistance as they hurriedly changed into battle gear together, or washed up after fights, and so she thought she knew. Now, staring at Kylo's engorgement, she realizes she was wrong. He must notice her eyes widen because he smiles, and kneels down to help her out of her own pants.

It is at this point that R2 turns around slowly and decides to go into sleep mode for a while.

As he peels the leggings off her calves, she twists her legs together, hiding the part of her that she has never shown anyone else as she looks at him. She thought she knew everything, from the bits and pieces she overheard in her life, but never knew it could be like this. She props herself up on her elbows to get a better look at him at her feet and bites her lip unconsciously seeing him completely nude.

She doesn't see the huge smile that graces his face as he looks down at her, her eyes settled on other parts of him besides his face.

They are still for a moment, admiring the other, both tinged with disbelief that they would ever see each other like this, before Kylo grabs her knees and pulls them apart, revealing Rey, all of Rey, before him.

He settles between her legs before her sense of embarrassment reaches her mind. He kisses her inner knees, then thighs. Apprehension rises in her as his face gets closer to her, exposed in front of him. Her legs start shaking under his lips and he looks up to her face, noticing her change. He was so close now he could feel her heat, but he didn't want it if she didn't want to give it. He waits for her explicit approval.

She looks down and grabs his head, pulling it up to her face to kiss him, her bashfulness getting the best of her. As he moves his body over her, though, he runs his middle finger through her slit, needing to feel the glistening folds he was so close to tasting. He stills slightly at her clit, causing her to moan into his mouth, before continuing the movement of his hand up.

When his hand reaches their faces, he breaks the kiss and slips his middle finger into his mouth, wanting so badly to taste her, having dreamt about it for so long.

The rawness of it, of seeing him savoring her, causes Rey to snap out of her head. She immediately kisses him, his hand still in his mouth, tasting herself on him. Kylo's eyes widen, before his dick tightens impossibly, harder than it has ever been.

Her hands travel down his torso and find his cock. She runs her flat palm over the untouched skin she finds there before grasping it. This time he doesn't pull away, but the sound that comes out of his throat is one Rey has never heard before. She breaks the kiss and looks down to him in her hand, looks down to see what she is doing to make him react in this way. His face burrows into her shoulder and she can hear his short breaths as she strokes the length of him. She sees clear liquid bead and run down the head of his cock and smiles, thinking back to him tasting her own wetness.

Maybe this is how it works, she thinks. She smiles and pushes his shoulder up slightly. He takes the hint and extends his arms up until he is fully above her in a plank position again. She wiggles her body down, angling slightly to avoid his legs. Kylo looks at her as she slowly moves, unsure of what she is getting at.

Finally, she stops, her head now directly under his cock. He looks down at her, head tilted, confused by the new positioning they've found themselves in. Suddenly, she lifts her head to his cock and tastes what ran out, flicking her tongue across it before covering the tip of him with her mouth.

"Rey," escapes his mouth in a gasp. His whole mind shut down to see her like that, how did she know to do that? His body ran in full chills and he moves quickly backwards, until his face is above hers again.

"Where did you learn that?" it is his turn to search her eyes with his own. It doesn't matter, truly, but if someone had hurt her, someone had forced her...he needed to know.

Her face shakes in surprise, "I didn't...I've never…I just thought...that's how...it works? Was it not good?"

"No, no, it was fucking amazing, I just thought…someone might have..."

She catches his meaning and reaches her hands up to his face, "I've never done this before, Kylo, I don't know what's...what I should do."

He nods, "I'll go slow," his heart picking up at what he expected to be true. But knowing for sure that he would be the first person to have her like this, that excited the part of him that wanted to keep her, the part of him that wanted to be not just the first person, but the only person.

He stretches out over her again, his cock resting against her mound. He peppers her face and neck in small, slow kisses and she smiles. He inches down lower, and kisses her breasts, before taking each one of her pink nipples into his mouth and sucking. As he does, she arches her back, slightly, moaning, which slides his dick down into her entrance, pressed flush against her clit. Everything in him wants to push further down into her, but he wants to feel her damp cunt to coat his cock in her juices, so he rolls his hips back and forth, rubbing himself against her clit.

Her small moans become louder as she feels him, not understanding how that part of him could be so hard. He slides down a centimeter and she freezes.

A small, "Wait," comes from Rey and everything in him stills. He thinks she's changed her mind, knows she has. He retreats by an inch, but she grabs his ribs, keeping him above her.

"Will you kiss me? When...when it happens, will you kiss me?" she brushes his hair out of his eyes as she says it, her eyes meeting his and searching.

He smiles and runs both his arms behind her back, pulling her in closer to him. He wants her so incredibly close, naked beneath him.

Their lips touch as he slides inside of her. The force that had been so stilled starts to run through them, and they both breath in sharply at its sudden return, though neither of them reach for it. All Kylo can think of is how warm she is. How warm and tight and right. He moves farther into her.

Rey breaks the kiss as she draws in a quick breath, her vocal box betraying her with a pained moan. His lips run across her extended neck and down to her breasts before he dares thrust deeper. His body is arched over hers as he takes her nipple into her mouth. He waits for her moans to turn to pleasure before moving again.

When he does, he is back to her face, kissing her all over as he moves deeper and deeper inside her. Her breath hitches with his every movement and she catches his eyes. They stare deeply at each other, as he moves inside her, tightening around him. His brain is flooded as his pelvis touches her, every inch of him now buried deep inside her perfect being. She takes all of him, her nose crinkling, her teeth baring. It reminds him a bit of how she looks in battle. He kisses her, but neither of them close their eyes, locked in with each other. He bites her lip before leaning his forehead against hers.

Something animalistic and instinctual overtakes her as his eyes bore into hers. She wraps her legs around his back and pulls him in even deeper, until she is painfully full of him, causing him to have to adjust his hold from being on her, to bracing the ground below her, to avoid laying his whole weight on top of her small body. She starts to move her hips against him in circles.

His breath in her ear makes her even more wet, the tiny intakes of air, the moans he is trying to keep hidden. The way she moves against him, grinding into him, shuts his brain down. She grabs his neck and pulls herself up to his ear, running her tongue over the outside of his lobe. She had always wanted to do that.

He breaks, and starts thrusting into her, hearing the air escape her with each movement deeper inside. Watching her writhe beneath him, feeling all of her, it is too much for him. The pressure builds low in his stomach and tightens, ready to release. He doesn't want this to end, but knows he won't last much longer with her legs around him like this.

He shifts, trying to prolong this, but she tightens her thighs around him keeping him inside of her.

Her mouth comes up to his ear, her whisper coming out like an invocation, "I want to feel it inside of me."

"Fuck Rey," all his fantasies break. This was infinitely better than anything he had ever dreamt up touching himself in the dark of his quarters for these last years.

Her walls tighten against him, he looks back at her eyes, wide open now, when he feels it. She had never felt it like this before, it was always quick and over in a second when she stroked herself to sleep on Jakku. This seems to last forever, she can't stop her muscles from seizing around him. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

Her legs loosen around him and he takes the opportunity to thrust, deep and hard into her. Her head snaps back and a scream escapes her.

He feels her nails dig into his shoulders as her back arches up towards him.

And then, it's too much for him, her cunt wrapped so tightly around him, drawing him closer to her. He seizes and his body shakes as he empties inside of her, his cock jerking with each surge.

They both calm, but he stays inside her, kissing her forehead, then her cheeks, then her lips. Moving down the her neck, before taking each nipple into his mouth once more before moving his hips off hers.

Between her legs, his cum mingles with a scant amount of blood. His face falls knowing he may have hurt her.

"Are you okay?" his concern floats as he lays down next to her still body. He takes her in his arms, pulling her bare back to his bare chest, "Are you in pain?"

Rey feels as if she is in a dream. Everything around her is fuzzy and soft. His warmth feels so good, even if the room around them is still so hot. She melts into him. She only woken up an hour or so ago, but she was so tired again, the sum of the last few days weighing on her. For the first time in the caves, she felt safe, and the exhaustion she had been staving off washed over her.

"Hm?" her voice is already edging on sleep.

"You're bleeding, just a bit."

"It's okay. I'm good. I'm so good," she says in a trance.

"Yes, you are."

He kisses the back of her head, his face buried into her hair as she falls asleep in his arms for the first time.


	16. Chapter 16

When Rey awakens, Kylo is on his side next to her, his eyes preoccupied by his own fingers playing in her hair.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," his eyes waver between hers and her hair.

Still under the influence of sleep, she looks at him, her eyes darting between his lips and his eyes, before the events of the day replay in her brain, a deluge come back to her.

A smile overtakes her as she turns a deep shade of pink. She brings her arms up and presses her lower palms into her eyes, trying to hide her embarrassment.

"How long was I asleep for?"

"Not long."

She feels his hand on her bare belly and realizes she is still completely naked. The feeling in the rest of her body slowly starts to turn back on, and there is something else: his dick hard against her thigh, pressing into her.

It surprises her, to have him so close, so ready. Her body moves to flee, but a tightening in her chest pulls her back. Instead of running, her body turns away sharply, exposing her back to him. She realizes too late it was either a very bad move or an incredibly good one, as his cock now nestled between her uppermost thighs. He takes it for a good one and wraps his arm around her side, bringing it up to her breasts.

Before she has a chance to react, to think twice, she feels his lips press against her back. So few things had ever touched her skin there so softly. Her body tenses and she lets out a slight whimper. Embarrassed that she sounds like that, she digs her head into the floor in front of her. Kylo, however, wants to hear that sound again, and kisses her back again, lightly. Her body reacts again, and he keeps kissing until every inch of her back is covered in them, holding her writhing body with his hand and rolling her nipples gently between his forefinger and thumb until she is moaning out loud, not afraid of her own sounds anymore.

His dick throbs, blood pulsing through it almost uncomfortably, he is so hard now.

When he stops his barrage of kisses, she turns her torso against him, until their faces line up, but their lower bodies are still pressed firmly against one another. Their eyes meet and she kisses him, deeply, her grogginess worn off by his touch.

As they continue to kiss, he takes his hand from her breasts and runs it down her body to her ass, to where his dick and her thighs meet. He parts her legs, running her leg up and over his own before bringing his hand back down her thigh and finding her clit. She moans into his mouth and he smiles. She is sopping wet already and his fingers are soon covered in her. He thinks about teasing her here, about running his fingers down her folds and deep inside her. About making her scream out his name before he gives her anything, but he is too eager, hearing her sigh out her pleasure. He wants to be in her now, wants to be in her forever. He thanks everything in her for allowing him to do this again, a second time. He wishes it would be the second time of many, and tries to stave off the reality that any of this could be the last.

He rushes those thoughts out of his head and brings the hand beneath her up to her chin, holding her mouth against his. His other hand finds his dick and brings it to her entrance, her small, round ass pressed up against his pubic hair.

He stops kissing her and looks at her.

"Is this okay?"

"Yes, Kylo, please," she says as she swallows and catches her breath.

He pushes into her when he hears her say his name. Fuck, he wants to hear her say that all the time.

"Say it again," he growls into her ear before nibbling it, his hand running from her chin to her neck.

"Please," she means it.

"Again," his grip tightens around her neck and he can feel the blood rushing beneath the surface. Her pussy twitches at the sensation of his fingers digging into her neck.

"Please Kylo," her voice struggles to come out.

"Say my name," his lips brush against her ear as he whispers it into her.

"Kylo," it comes out as a growl, her voice box impeded by his grip.

He releases his hand from her neck and lets her gasp in air. His hand tightens on her ass, burrowing his fingers into her flesh, watching it dimple under his pressure.

"Fuck, Rey, what do you do to me?" he can no longer contain his deep moans.

She brings her hand up until it is behind him, in his hair, and kisses him deeply as he thrusts into her. When they pull apart, a smile graces her lips, luxuriating in seeing him like this, sweaty and needy inside of her. She bites her lip as he grazes something deep inside her and he notices, repeating the same exact movement. Her breath rises and her moans intensify until she finally breaks.

"I'm close, Kylo." She holds her breath and waits. When it comes, lights play behind her eyes as her whole body rocks back and forth on his cock.

When he hears her say those words, he shatters. He holds his breath, waiting for her, wanting her to feel good before he does. When he feels her pussy wrap even more tightly against his dick, he can't stop it anymore, and he pours into her, his cock twitching with each spurt.

They both tremble, her in his arms, rocked shortly by the aftershocks of their union. He stays in her until he goes soft, and spills out with his semen. She feels the warmth between her legs and rubs them together, never realizing how messy this act truly was, but also not wanting to clean him off her, ever.

He releases her and rolls over. She mirrors him, both panting and looking at the obsidian ceiling above. They both smile and let out tiny laughs at the same time, letting the expanse of emotions get to them simultaneously. Was this happiness?

Something occurs to her right then. It snatches her from the moment and she sits straight up, covering her breasts with her arms.

"Rey?" his post-coital exhaustion doesn't quite pick up on her rapid change in emotion.

Her hair is half matted, half messy, a result of Kylo playing with it, no doubt. She surveys the room as he props himself up on one elbow, running his fingers lightly against her arm. Tracing her had quickly become his favorite hobby.

She sees the glint of the droid in the corner and quickly pops up, leaving Kylo almost cold in her wake.

"Fuck, R2!" she breathes and quickly lunges for her clothes, stepping into her pants before Kylo has a chance to process.

He looks to the droid silent in the corner.

"He's in sleep mode. He has been since…" his expression quickly changes to a frown as he notices she's already in her pants, breasts rewrapped, and is pulling her shirt over her head.

The moment escapes him, this moment he had wanted to last forever is over. The swift change in emotion becomes a pit in his stomach, a black plague nestles in him. What if that was the last time he would ever feel her?

He sits up fully and she is already in her pack, digging for something.

"Don't worry, even if he was looking, I don't think he would ever play that memory of us for _our_ grandchi-" he catches himself before he can finish. _Fuck._

She looks up from her bag and meets his eyes. Her lips form into a soft smile, sweetly forgiving him for that mistake, letting him know in one movement that it was okay, before returning to rifling through the knapsack.

But his guilt floods back to him again and he rises to find his pants. He pulls them on, knowing that he would never have grandchildren with her, that he had eviscerated his own lineage when his saber ran through her. There was no other route to continue the Skywalker legacy. It would only ever be Rey now. He would never share himself with another.

"I don't deserve this. I don't deserve you." He stands looking at the opposite wall when he says it.

"Are we back to this?" he can tell by her voice that she wears an exhausted smile.

"Rey…" his voice is deep and earnest as he turns to face her.

"Kylo…" she mimics his voice, mocking his breathy melodrama as she walks towards him, holding the canteen and two ration packets, a huge grin plastered on her face.

He is enamoured in her beauty, never having seen her so unencumbered by worry or panic before. He takes her in, and can't contain his smile back at her.

She gets to him and kisses him as if it were easy, as if it were the most natural, easiest thing she has ever done. Her hand are full with the supplies, so he takes the opportunity to rest his hands against her sides.

She brings her arms up to rest on his shoulders, her full hands up behind his head and they stand there, almost swaying, her umber eyes sparkling under his.

 _Fuck, I love her._

The thought enters his head immediately, and hits him fully.

She lets go of the supplies and they drop behind him, her arms falling from his shoulders. He turns slightly, about to comment on her clumsiness, but when he turns back to her, her face is in full shock.

 _What?_

She doesn't say it, but he can hear it. A crescendo of energy picks up around them, the thick force thawing all at once and flowing like a coursing river through them. Both of them gasp at the sudden change. The force, its task now complete, returns deep into the mountain. Their bond reopens and everything rushes back. He realizes she had heard him, heard his thoughts, heard his declaration, and takes a step back.

"What?" she says it outloud this time, everything in her pushing and pulling in confusion, her eyes searching his for the truth.

Before he can process, the familiar dimness of their surroundings pulses in blue, lighting up both their bodies in its glow. Her face scrunches up and breaks eye contact, trying to make sense out of the rapid fire events.

They both look down to her wrist. Her beacon was pulsing. She puts her hand over it, trying to make it not real, trying to make none of this real.

"They're here…" his voice is small and detached. His mind jumps back to the way he felt when she had left his arms. He was never going to feel her again.

He wants to grab her, to kneel at her altar once more, to have her, but as he thinks it, the mountain rumbles.

"No," escapes both of them simultaneously, more out of disbelief than fear.

The ground around them splits deep between them. The fissure runs all the way up and around, cracking the whole room open like an egg. Red light floods everything as the outside surface of Mustafar is exposed through the ever growing crevice. Both their eyes struggle with the sudden influx of light, even the dim glow being more than they had experienced in the last few days.

Above them flies a U-Wing, an older model. Kylo notices it a second before Rey, and glances at her as she finds it.

The light on her beacon beeps more urgently, flashing red and purple and blue through their time together.

Her eyes come back down from the ship to him. As they do, the ground beneath her gives way, and her body disappears suddenly from his line of sight.

"REY!" he lunges for her, but it is too late. The side of the room that she stood on slopes down, and her body lays on the ground, a slight trace of blood gathering under her head.

Kylo immediately jumps down to her, before his side of the floor collapses too. R2, awoken by the quake, is ready, and his thrusters keep him airborne, landing gently on the ground beneath them. The walkway slopes up on either side of them now, and the heat from the lava lake below rises. The earth still holds its dangerous rumble, but it is lessened as Kylo tries to figure out what to do. He can no longer see the U-Wing and knows by now it must have landed. He more than knows, he can feel it, the force come back to join him. He kneels down and places his hands under her, lifting her to his body. She is limp in his arms, but he can still feel her strong will in the force. Her injuries had been enough to knock her out, but they weren't serious.

He looked at her unconscious body in his arms, and knew that the force was giving him a choice. This was all done purposefully. From the second they stepped into these caves - no, from the second they met, it had been playing around them, orchestrating. It wasn't Snoke anymore, it was the very fabric of existence that brought them together. It had planted those coordinates, it had restructured this place, it had known when to separate them and what to show them in the memories. And now, he knew, it had thrown Rey down, incapacitated her, to see what he would do, what choice he would make, with her in his arms and the Resistance closing in.

He would take her. He would take her and run. They were far enough away that they might not catch him. With the force back he would use it against them, to get away from them, to keep her. He would keep her.

He looked down at her face, blood starting to trickle from her head wound.

 _Keep her._ What did that mean?

He knew what it meant for him. It meant he would take her to his ship. He would lay her in his bed. He would know her better than anyone else ever had. He would fall asleep talking with her in his arms every night, and wake up to her every morning. He would marry her in front of everyone, in front of the Galaxy, and take her to bed that night, knowing that it would only be him and her forever. He couldn't give her a family, a traditional one, but nothing was ever traditional in his family. _He_ would be her family.

And Rey? Rey would hate him for it. She would thrash and scream and tear her heart out, trying to get back to those people, those people she knitted together into her own makeshift family, who approached him as he thought. She would claw at him, and spit on him, and do everything she could to escape him. She would tear through him, but more than that, she would tear through herself, and like a caged animal she would change into something else. Something that wasn't Rey. He could never keep a person like Rey. She was her own being, her own free and independent spirit, and he could never trap her.

He could take her body, he could so easily bend it to his will, but he wanted her, her soul, and he would ever have that, ever, if he took her now.

He turns, and starts to hike up the slope to her people, towards the Pilot and the Traitor. R2, who stood behind Kylo, watching him deliberate, lets out a relieved sigh, and follows him.

Before he can get far, over the roar of the lava, he hears shouting. He stops and looks up. On the opposite side of the room, across ever expanding lava flow and now hanging walkways, he sees them, their weapons drawn. He recognizes the Pilot and the Traitor, but there is one more, one he has never seen. They're screaming something at him but he can't hear them. He focuses.

"Put her down Ren," the Pilot's voice rises amongst the rest, dangerous and lacking the usual frivolity which the Pilot usually had in these situations.

Or perhaps he should say the General. He wasn't surprised that the highest ranking member of the Resistance was there for Rey, risking himself. She was their Last Jedi. She was their hope. But more than that, she was their family, and they weren't leaving her behind.

The part of his heart that he had been trying to kill for the last decade swells. He looks down at her and knows she deserves this. She deserves to have a family that actually comes back for her. A small part of him wishes she were awake to see them fighting for her. He begins to understand, now, her decision in the Throne Room when she chose them.

As the thoughts enter his head, so does a growing darkness. As he sets her down and backs away, a searing jealousy rips through him. He closes his eyes to try to tamp down on it, but it resonates through him, making him nauseous. She would always choose them over him, like she had done so many years before. She would always run to them, and not to him, in battle. He had done too much bad, there was too much darkness in him, she would never be his, not fully, not as long as they still existed. His eyes shoot back up to them in fury. R2 wavers behind him, not sure what to do with all the emotion in the widening room.

The walkways between them groan, now only affixed by a few points above Kylo. They stare each other down and he is sure he will have to dodge blaster fire soon. He backs up, shielding R2 just in case. The new one's head cocks a bit, but the Traitor and the Pilot's faces are stone. The tension between them rises, and he sees the Traitor whispering to the other two, no doubt elucidating on the best way to strike. No one wants to be the first to move.

The lair makes the decision for them, as one of the walkways swings lose, creating a domino effect between them. All of the pathways start to buckle under their own weight, after losing half of their supports in the collapse. Kylo looks to the Resistance fighters, still on the solid ground on the opposite side of the room, distracted by the imminent disintegration of this place. He begins to inch farther backwards, making his way towards the surface of Mustafar above them.

The rebels notice his retreat and start to run down the opposite slope, towards Rey's prone body on the ground.

Kylo is almost gone when he hears a snap. The force is interfering again. He flashes around to see a walkway careening down at an angle. He instantly slows everything around him to a glacial roll. It was his first time reaching out to the force in several days and it felt right to be able to manipulate it again. His minor control over time gives him a moment to take in the scene. The Resistance are opposite him and nearing Rey, but still farther away from her than he is. R2 stands over Rey, not abandoning her like he had just done. He looks to the walkway and his mind conducts dozens of small equations in the force, calculating its trajectory. His heart seizes when he realizes it will crush her. In an instant, he is running at full speed back to her. He had never staved off something that large with the force, he didn't know if he could, but he might get to her in time. He had to get to her in time.

The roar of the walkway is thunderous as it approaches, but everything in his senses is her. Her face, her eyes, her smell, it was all her. He is on his knees sliding as the walkway makes contact with the hard ground beside her and instinctively, his hand comes out, and he channels everything around him into holding it off. He screams as his body slides against hers, but the walkway doesn't stop. It is so close to them now and he moves to cover her body with his own, as if that would help. As he does, the walkway stops, suspended harshly in the air above them, perpendicular to their bodies.

The rebels, who were running as fast as they could, instantly freeze. It was as if Kylo was sucking all of the energy out of the room and channeling it into saving Rey.

Kylo takes her into his free arm and bellows, feeling as if the whole weight of the walkway was crushing him slowly, even though it remained rigid above him. He gives one final push, and it is enough, sending the entirety of the walkway back against the cliff, down into the lava lake below.

He looks down at her, peaceful in his arms, his sharp breath strong enough to move her damp hair out of her face. He is so tired. He brings her closer to his chest and wants to keep her there while he sleeps, but he hears the footsteps of the rebels approaching. He closes his eyes and stands, Rey in his arms, R2 behind him.

Their blaster pistols are all raised to his head as they approach slowly. He doesn't move. He doesn't know if he can move. He sways slightly and thinks he sees something like compassion from the one he doesn't recognize. He focuses his stare on her, but as he does, her face drains of anything it might have held except for hatred and contempt.

The rebels falter and hesitate in front of him, this most hated man in the Galaxy, this evil they had seen destroy so many of their friends, this monster who had just saved Rey from certain death.

Kylo takes a step towards them and they all tighten their grip on their weapons.

Kylo feels a brush against his leg, but doesn't see R2 rush in front of him, stepping between the Resistance and himself.

"R2, buddy, get out of the way," the Pilot's laser focus does not leave Kylo's face.

Overlapping beeps ring out, and the Pilot's shoulders drop, slightly, though his weapon does not. The Traitor and the Other One don't let up, clearly not understanding the droid.

"What do you mean, R2? Of course he is," the Pilot's face drops into a frown.

R2's beeps get louder and closer together.

The Pilot's weapon drops, and the Traitor and the Other One lapse into confusion.

"Poe! What are you doing?"

The Pilot stays silent and Kylo takes a step forward.

"Poe," the Traitor's grip tightens on his weapon, saying the Pilot's name slowly, as a warning.

Kylo closes the distance between himself and the Pilot and stretches Rey out to him. The Pilot holsters his weapon and takes her still body into his arms.

"I got you Rey, you're safe now," escapes from the Pilot as a whisper, meant only for Rey, but Kylo hears it and everything in him lurches.

He slowly backs up and watches the Pilot's hands cradle her, bile rising in his stomach. The dirty scum's fingers delve too deeply into her flesh and Kylo bites down on his tongue to avoid lashing out. The Pilot's grip readjusts around Rey as he pulls her closer to his body and Kylo can taste the copper of his own blood in his mouth.

He doesn't notice when the Pilot's gaze moves off Rey and looks at him directly. He raises his eyes from where Rey was being held and meets his gaze.

"A life for a life," the Pilot looks at Kylo sternly as he says it.

Kylo stares, not giving anything back. Poe turns and starts away, but the Traitor and the Other One remain, their guns pointed directly at him still.

Slowly, the Traitor starts to back away, but his gaze and blaster never leave Kylo. The Traitor reaches out for the Other One, but she pulls away, and in an instant, her blaster is flush with Kylo's forehead, her arms stretching unnaturally to meet his height.

"ROSE!" the Traitor screams and the Pilot whips around with Rey, now further down the walkway.

"He took Paige from me. He almost took Rey from me. We can't just let him live, not after everything he's done," full hatred warbles in her throat as she stares pure disgust into Kylo's unmoving face.

"Not like this Rose, you're better than this, we're better than this."

She turns her head to the Traitor as he talks, a tear running down her face.

"I promise you, we will kill him, but it can't be today," the Traitor continues, obviously having some pull over the Other One.

Her face contorts, her small features turning back to Kylo. She lowers her gun from his head.

"A life for a life," her voice is strong. She turns away from him to follow the Pilot, unafraid.

* * *

As they near the U-Wing, the hair on Poe's neck stands up. He looks to where they came from to see Kylo Ren staring back, having walked out of the crevasse to watch their retreat. He is far away, still, and Poe knows he is not an immediate threat, but his presence seems to loom over them. It is as if Poe can see his haunted eyes clearly, though he is only a dark mark on the already dark horizon.

Poe pauses, and as he does, he feels Rey flutter in his arms. He looks down to her. Her eyes are barely open, but they're not on him. He feels her body reach out, slightly, almost imperceptibly, towards Ren. Before he can process it, she is limp again and the ground beneath them starts to rumble.

They run to the U-Wing and start take-off procedures, Rey tucked securely into a bed.

When Poe reaches the cockpit, the Supreme Leader is still frozen in the same spot, in the distance. He stands unwavering as the world crumbles around him. Poe watches him for as long as he can, and thinks he sees Ren fall to his knees as the planet becomes a blur of landmarks beneath them.


	17. Chapter 17

It is her skin that wakes before she does, prickling into gooseflesh against the stagnant cold. She knows she's on the _Falcon_ again as the familiar dead air of space breaches her, rutting down into her bones. The only warmth comes from a small hand in her own, rubbing circles into her knuckles. It's not the same hand that she had fallen asleep entwined with a day earlier, but it isn't the wrong hand, either. It lets her know she's home.

Rey turns the sound on next, and hears Rose's breathing, slow and steady next to her. From somewhere else, not far off, Chewie's soft grumbles are overlaid by Poe and Finn's voices. They're tense, getting nowhere fast in talking to the Wookie, their proficiency in Shyriiwook lacking without Rey acting as translator. Small mechanical whines and sharp hums let her know the droids are there too, their sounds giving away the underlying tension in the room.

 _They're safe._

Something that had been missing wells in her chest, though she is careful not to show any outward signs, still wanting to appear to be asleep, just until she can find her bearings. But they're safe, they're safe. The joy of this fact elicits a ripple in the force around her, as if to remind her that it was there again, that it had unmuted itself. She dips into it immediately, letting it billow over her, reaching out to the binding that runs through every living thing in their fleet. She feels the losses of the battle immediately, but also the deep victory in how few were actually gone.

Warmth rises from her core, the force come back to her acting as a sense memory. The only times she had felt the force in the last few days had been when she was close to him, when she touched him. And now, the force is with her, but he isn't. All at once, a hole disintegrates in her stomach, the warmth decaying into itself. He wasn't there. He wasn't there, but more than that, she couldn't feel him. Even in the years the galaxy had separated them, she still felt him like an shadow in the back of her mind, but now even that was gone.

A fear rises in her but she knows she has to control it. She reaches out further from the fleet, following the infinite cords that run out, linking the universe together. It's different than her meditation, less formal. Nothing is laid out in front of her, and all she can see is the blackness behind her eyelids, but she feels the span of the galaxy in front of her and the basest of threads between everything.

The further she gets, the fainter everything becomes and so she focuses, brushing past star systems and asteroid fields, doubling back and guessing the best she can. She follows the threads back to Mustafar, approximating locations, her years of navigating the _Falcon_ and working out coordinates with Chewie paying their dividends. She feels the heat from the planet, a dim red glow rising behind her eyes, and she can't tell if it's real or if her mind is just filling in the blanks. She searches. She feels everything, everything, but not him.

The muscles in her stomach all tighten, as if preparing to be attacked. She backs up from Mustafar, the red glow setting like a sun as she does. _No._

Panic descends and she starts following random strands, all strategy lost, hoping to find anything. It twists and tangles in her mind and barbs rise in her chest. She runs through countless living things, the flora and fauna of exotic planets rushing into and out of her veins. She feels the misery and joy, sees the newborn faces and decaying rot. She's never gone this fast through it all, never felt it all so fully. She feels almost omnipotent, but the one thing she wants most desperately she cannot see. It overwhelms her but she can't stop, the cycle of life, death, rebirth flashing unnaturally in front of her until she feels it, and stops cold, stifling her nausea.

One of the millions of threads is being strummed. The vibrations become more insistent in the seconds following her noticing it, before they crescendo into a deafening roar.

 _Kylo._

He's trying to find her. He can't feel her either, wherever he is, but he can't do what she's doing. He is too shut off to the totality of it all to traverse it like this.

It's as if he's standing on the other side of a shut door and pounding, hoping she's on the other side.

Rey moves slowly, as if quick movements would alert him. She lays out the possibilities in front of her.

She could follow it, she could follow this cord to him.

But then what? She's not sure what happened, really, to bring her back home. All she remembers is the earth opening up to swallow her and then blackness. What had he done? What had he stopped himself from doing? She needed to work out the answers on her own before seeing him.

She steps back, but as she does, the cacophony of the strumming changes. It doesn't lose its insistence, but it becomes more desperate, and less agitated. It carries something else, and Kylo's last words to her ring out in her mind.

Could she call them words if he hadn't spoken them? He hadn't meant for her to hear it, but she had. _Love._

She understood love on a survival level. The smallest part of her loved Plutt, as twisted as it was, for protecting her in order to protect himself. She understood it on a familial level, still feeling Rose's hand in her own, despite her brain being across the stars.

But that kind of love, the kind of love he thought he had, she had no realm for it, no understanding for it. It didn't serve a purpose to her. She had no room for something like that.

She couldn't face that yet. She needed to figure things out. All she had wanted was to know that he was alive, and he was.

She retreats, hoping to edge out of this slowly, but something in her recognizes how cruel it would be to not let him know that she was still there. That he was not alone. That had been her promise, and she had always kept it. She wouldn't break it now.

So she sends a pulse back, a single strum, and hopes he can feel it through his own clamoring. Immediately, the vibrations stop. Message received.

She withdraws back to the _Falcon_ , easing back through the synapses. But as she does the string that connects them starts shaking again, more violently than before. It is too loud, too imperious, too entitled, and she rushes backwards from it.

The last step, the step that makes everything real again, is taken for her. Rey opens her eyes, fleeing from Kylo's demand.

As soon as she does, the sounds stops, and she feels Rose's lips press into her forehead. Rey doesn't blink, not wanting to allow him back in again, not yet. Instead she lets Rose's black hair span her vision. Her body swells, the changing emotions threatening to paralyze her. Her brain runs into sensory overload, Rose's scent filling the air in front of her with a familiar soft vanilla. Poe and Finn's whispers and Threepio's "oh dear"s in the background are magnified, and the racket of the old ship's systems roar. She breaths in, but the air shakes past her throat, and stutters through her. It all hits her, her friends, the caves, Kylo. She had betrayed them, she was a traitor. Her face scrunches and tears fall sideways out of her eyes.

"You're okay, I'm here," Rose whispers to her, noticing Rey's shakiness. It was the mantra turned hymn they would whisper to each other after their respective nightmares, cuddled up in the darkness after lights out. It made everything better, but it couldn't fix this.

"Rose," Rey's voice is weak and there's a desperation to it.

Rose's face lights up in a smile and her eyes well, before her face darkens, "Don't you ever do that again. I can't lose another sister in this lifetime."

Rey reaches up and wipes the tear falling from Rose's cheek.

"I'm sorry," Rey's apology holds more meaning than Rose knows.

Rose sits up straighter and her chin dips ever so slightly in a nod. She immediately accepts the apology, her hand gripping tighter around Rey's.

Rey knows, though, that Rose doesn't understand the apology she's accepting. She knows that if Rose truly understood, she would never forgive her.

Rey moves her feet, digging her heels into the cushions below to push her body up into a sitting position against the wall behind her, but as she does, her spinal fluid swishes in agony. She squeezes her eyes tightly, her head pounding as if it had been split in two.

Rose's hands are on her shoulders now, guiding her back down into a lying position.

"Don't rush it," Rose readjusts the blanket on top of her. Rey reaches out to hold the blanket tightly, but as she does she realizes that it isn't a blanket at all. Instead, the soft brown leather of Finn's jacket envelops her. She holds it even tighter when she notices.

"Try to sleep more," Rose glances behind her as she whispers, "They'll bum-rush you once they notice you're awake again, so for your sake, let's try to stave that off as long as possible." Rose's smile graces her face once again as she sweeps hair out of Rey's eyes.

"Thank you," Rey's eyes close, the pain making her forget about what lies on the other side of her eyelids.

"You know I got you," and with that, Rey lets the soft hum of the _Falcon_ take her to sleep.

* * *

Rey's body shoots up into a sitting position from a dead sleep, everything in her screaming at the change. She gasps, and tries to catch her breath, the air here being so much easier to force into her lungs than it had been on Mustafar. The strumming had haunted her dreams until it was too much, until she had to flee back to consciousness.

Instantly, her friends are upon her, Finn and Chewie reaching her first.

Finn comes down and instantly hugs her, kneeling in front of her. She hugs him back before Chewie pushes him out of the way, and takes over the hug, his grumbling full of relief and apology.

"I know, Chewie, I know. It's my fault, really. It's all my fault." Chewie releases her and his large paw comes up to touch her face. It almost covers her entire head, but when he brings his paw back down, she misses it.

Finn opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, he is interrupted again and nearly bowled over by a flash of orange and white.

BB-8 parts Chewie and Finn, and brushes against Rey's leg, hanging now from the enclave of the bed. She wills her ab muscles to bend and adjusts his antenna lightly.

"Hey, buddy. I'm so glad you're okay."

Finn takes it as his opportunity, "Rey, are _you_ okay?"

She smiles and nods before her eyes well with tears and her chin quivers.

"Oh Rey," Finn pulls her back into a hug.

"I was so worried about all of you." Her words muffle themselves into Finn's shoulder.

Finn grabs her shoulders and pushes her off him gently, his mouth gaped open, "Rey, we found you with that monster. You shouldn't have been the one who was worrying about _us_."

She sees now the whole group lined up behind Finn. Rose stands next to Poe and Threepio, all of their faces gripped in concern. Rey's eyes unlock themselves from them and wander downward, a tear dropping between herself and them as they do.

"I didn't know he would be there," Rey's voice is full of a misplaced apology.

"Of course you didn't," Rose speaks for the group.

"I'm so sorry," Rey says softly.

"What are you sorry for Rey?" Finn takes back over.

"I don't know. For making you worry, for the wasted resources, for everything," she is half telling the truth, the half she can face.

"It doesn't matter. You're here, you're okay. None of that matters," Finn's hands move down from her shoulders and skim her arms until he finds her hands and holds both of them in his own. "We know he tricked you with Threepio," Rey glances at Chewie as he nods, knowing they had deciphered enough of the Shyriiiwook language to get that tidbit out of him, "He tricked you and you're okay and that's all that matters."

"He didn't trick me."

The group sways back a little at this casual admission.

"It was the force. It brought us there together, I think, to show us a path forward," she looks at each member of the group as she says it, as if willing them to understand.

When she's looked at everyone, she comes back down to Finn in front of her and sees his Adam's apple bob as he swallows hard and shifts uncomfortably. She feels the air shift around them. Her homecoming was over, and the part of all them that had to be soldiers wrestles the moment away.

Finn looks around to Poe and the others, gathering their tacit approval for his next words. Poe nods, as if giving him the final push he needs to be able to talk.

"Rey," Finn's voice comes out different, as if, for the first time since they met, it was hard for him to find the right words, "When you came back for us on Crait and saved our asses, we didn't ask any questions about what happened on the _Supremacy,_ because it didn't matter, you were back with us," he swallows, hard. "When you came out of those caves with half a red lightsaber, we didn't push it because we trusted you. And when you came back a year ago almost dead because of..." Finn's voice trails off, "We didn't ask any questions, because we knew you."

"And now you don't?" Rey's eyes are gripped with fear.

Poe shakes his head, but it is Finn who talks, "No, it's not that...we just, we need to ask questions and get answers, Rey. We can't keep pretending that there's not something between you and, and _him_ ," Finn's voice is laced with disgust as he references Kylo.

Rey exhales, her head stinging with the pressure. A silence descends and she knows they are waiting for her to respond, to tell them that they're wrong, that there's nothing there, that she hates him as much as they do, but all of that would be a lie. She freezes, not sure of what to do next, and looks to Poe, who always helps her when she's stuck or can't figure something out. Poe, her saviour.

Poe waits in the background, not looking back at her, not really. He rolls his bottom lip between his thumb and his forefinger, as if in contemplation. She wants him to say something, but he seems determined not to. She realizes he hasn't hugged her, and the thought makes her insides burn.

"Hey, back up, back up, give my patient some room," a strong booming voice erupts from the corner of the room, breaking the tension. Rey can't see the owner of the voice past the group in front of her, but she knows by its cadence that it's Dr. Kalonia, obviously on loan to check on Rey from the medical freighter.

The group parts to allow Kalonia to see Rey, and Poe finally speaks up, "Kalonia, actually, it's not a great time…"

Kalonia turns from Rey and stares knives deep into Poe, "Not a great time? She's bleeding from a head wound and covered in alien bacteria. I hate to break up the reunion, but some things take precedence, General."

Poe nods curtly, knowing when to accept being put in his place. He knows Kalonia is one hundred percent right and he is one hundred percent wrong.

"Now go, I need to clean her up so I can tell what I'm looking at and I don't need a gaggle of men surrounding me when I do."

Everything in the room had changed so suddenly with Kalonia's appearance that it takes them a while to actually move. They disperse slowly as Kalonia moves her head under Rey's arm to support her enough to stand. Rey tries to help, but the change in positioning reignites her head wound and she sags like dead weight on Kalonia's frame. Kalonia knows she can't carry her to the fresher alone.

"Rose, actually, can you stay and help?"

Rose turns and almost runs back, putting her head under Rey's other arm to help support her.

Finn and Poe still, looking to Kalonia, signaling that they could help too.

"No, you two leave. Anything without a vagina needs to be out of the room right now."

Rose can't help but laugh at Kalonia's brashness, a welcome change from how uncomfortable everything was only a moment again. Rose's laugh makes Rey smile too. Rey watches as her friends file out, dejectedly.

"This is discrimination," Finn says, faking seriousness, as he puts his hands on Poe's back to avoid running into him in the shuffle.

"File a complaint with our non-existent Human Resources department," Kalonia deadpans back, readjusting her grip on Rey as she does.

Rey looks as her friends leave and takes inventory: Threepio leads the way, followed by Chewie, Poe, Finn, BB-8….where was R2?

When they're gone and the door shuts behind them, Rey turns to Rose, "Where's R2?" but her words are mumbled under her clothes as Kalonia lifts her grimy shirt over her head.

"Let's get these filthy things off," Kalonia throws Rey's top on the ground.

Kalonia starts to pull Rey's leggings down, peeling them off her skin, as Rose holds her up from behind. Rose's face awkwardly rests between Rey's shoulder blades, her cheek pressed against Rey's back, amplifying the height difference between the two. Rey's not sure Rose heard her question, so she opens her mouth to ask again about R2, but as she does, Kalonia stops undressing her. Rey's leggings hang midway off her leg and she looks down, unsure of how she was going to step out of them in this awkward position.

Kalonia is staring at the bright red inkblot of blood staining Rey's undergarment. Kalonia's face looks upwards at Rey, and there must be a pleading in her eyes, because Kalonia quickly pulls the leggings the rest of the way down and balls them up, throwing them discreetly with her shirt, before Rose is any the wiser.

Rey is left bare in front of them, her clothes a pile next to her.

She's been naked in front of Rose too many times to count, and in her recovery a year ago, Kalonia had been the one to bathe her, mostly, with help from Leia and Rose. But there was a different energy now, and she was wholly uncomfortable to be this exposed in front of them.

Rey didn't know much about sex or the mechanisms surrounding it. She knew Kalonia was a doctor though, trained in anatomy, and that she had just seen the evidence of her coupling with Kylo, though Rey wasn't sure Kalonia would interpret it that way.

At the thought of just how unmasked she truly was, Rey immediately covers her naked body, pushing her forearm to her breasts and a hand to her pubic mound, trying to hide any tell tale signs that weren't there.

Rose cocks her head to the side when she sees Rey hiding herself. Rey had walked around their room ass out to the world so much, Rose thought she might be more well acquainted with Rey's body than her own, so to see her so bashful was different.

Rey braces for Kalonia's words about the blood, but they don't come. Instead, the two women start to walk her in the direction of the fresher.

"There's really not a need for this, I can bathe myself, been doing it for years," but almost as soon as Rey says it, her steps betray her and a knee gives out, almost crumbling her to the floor. Kalonia and Rose flank either side of her and keep her up.

"Yeah, what about walking? Been doing that for years too? Because you suck at it," Rose chuckles as the words leave her mouth.

They reach the fresher and Kalonia stretches out to turn it on, still supporting Rey with her other hand. They wait for it to heat up and Rey takes time to internally thank Kalonia for this reprieve. She didn't know how she would answer her friends questions about Kylo, but at least this staved it off for a little longer.

They sit Rey down on the floor underneath the stream once it is warm enough, and Rose kneels beside her, keeping her upright.

Rose reaches up and squeezes soap from the dispenser, and slowly starts to wash Rey's body, caked in sand and sweat. Her shade lightens as the dirt washes down the drain, revealing her clean skin below. Rose is fully clothed, and the water soaks through her, but if she minds, she doesn't let on. She's focused on cleaning Rey, washing her like a mother would her child.

Or, how Rey imagines a mother might wash her child. Her mother had never bathed her before. Not that she could remember, at least.

Rey allows Rose to lather her hair, and stretches her legs out in front of her, losing herself in the feeling of Rose's hands working against her scalp. Rose gathers all of Rey's loose hair, which had long ago fallen out of her tight three buns, and piles it on top of her head, kneading in the soap, careful not to touch the gash on the front of her head.

As Rey leans into Rose's touch, she suddenly feels Rose's fingers still in her hair, before one of Rose's hands runs down to slowly graze her neck. Rey feels the bruising under Rose's fingertips and freezes, too.

"Dr. Kalonia?" the concern in Rose's voice kills any hope in Rey that she hadn't seen the blemishes.

Dr. Kalonia had been threading a needle to give Rey her much needed stitches, an old technique she still employed, never fully entrusting any medical work to droids. At hearing Rose's voice, though, she immediately stops and closes the small distance between them. Rose tilts Rey's head to the side, exposing the bruises more fully to the doctor above them.

Kalonia stoops down and her eyes survey Rey, who twists her legs together, afraid of the doctor's gaze and what she might find. Suddenly, Rey feels very lightheaded, and slumps back, causing Rose to have to shore up her hold on Rey's now slippery body.

"Rey, is it okay if I touch your legs?" Kalonia's voice is safe, but it still scares Rey to no end.

Rey nods, the heat of the water making her sleepy. Kalonia puts her hands on either side of Rey's knees and opens them, slightly, before closing them and looking down at the ground.

"Rose, can Rey and I have the room for a while?"

Rose gives Rey a squeeze, a silent kindness, before Kalonia turns off the water. She grabs a towel and wraps it around Rey, taking responsibility for Rey's now fragile body. Rose stands, her clothes soaked through, and begrudgingly takes her leave, her eyes not leaving Rey until the very last second.

Rey's heart pounds beneath the towel as Kalonia helps her to stand. What had they seen? Did they know? Was it a secret that all women could guess?

Kalonia dries Rey off and helps her step into fresh leggings, before wrapping her top loosely in a tunic. They don't bother with a breast band, Rey's endowments being small enough that she didn't need one unless she was on a mission or training or fighting.

Kalonia sits Rey down on a closed toilet, the only part of the room stable enough for an unstable Rey, before backing up and leaning on the sink behind her.

It takes a moment for Kalonia to speak, but when she does, her voice is even and measured, "I need to ask you some questions now that we're alone. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I'd like to ask them now. Is that okay?"

Rey nods, her throat already burning.

"I need you to be honest with me. Some of these question might be uncomfortable."

She knows, she knows, she knows, alarms blare in Rey's head, but she nods through the noise.

Kalonia takes a deep breath, the grey lining her temples becoming apparent to Rey. "I noticed...bruising," Kalonia touches her neck, and then reaches down and touches her inner thigh, indicating the spots on Rey she noticed it, "That isn't consistent with typical battle bruises."

Rey can't look Kalonia in the eyes anymore. She stares at the textured ground of the _Falcon_ , wishing she could sink in and become one with the ship.

"Rey, did Kylo Ren hurt you...differently than he has before?"

"No." Rey's response is immediate.

Kalonia nods.

"Have you had any changes since the injuries you sustained last year that you've not shared with me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Have your menses returned?"

"No, you said they wouldn't," Rey knows why she asks, but isn't ready to delve into the real reason for the blood Kalonia had seen earlier.

Kalonia nods again, "I'd like to take you onto the medical freighter tomorrow to run further tests."

"Why am I not there now?"

"Your wounds appeared superficial at first, there wasn't a need."

"And now? They don't appear superficial anymore?"

Kalonia looks away, "Given your injury history, and the fact that it appears your menses have possibly returned, I'd like to do a pelvic exam."

Rey holds her breath. "It's not what you think." Her mind is flipping wildly. She knows Kalonia knows. She feels the judgment, feels Kalonia's appraisal of her soul for laying with the enemy.

"I don't think anything Rey, I'm not here to…"

"It was consensual."

It feels as if the air is sucked out of the room. Dr. Kalonia's body straightens and her eyebrows raise, as if not expecting that at all. Her medical training and bedside manner quickly intercede though, and her body language evens out. A quiet descends between the two.

Rey knows what comes next. She knows she will be shunned and left, and this time, it will be all her fault. She gave herself to Kylo Ren, willingly, more than willingly, and she no longer deserves the friendship of the people he hurt, of the people he continues to hurt. She braces in Kalonia's silence, waiting for her to leave to tell Poe that Rey has betrayed them, that she's a traitor to their cause. Rey knows she will take whatever punishment they give her willingly, that there will be no fight. The shame that settles in her is all consuming.

Rey looks utterly torn apart, more lost than Kalonia has ever seen the young Jedi. Kalonia worried, in the absence of Leia, of Luke, about this girl with the fate of the Galaxy looming on her, but the confidence and happiness the girl exuded on the _Falcon_ , surrounded by her friends, erased all her doubts. Now though, she could see it, as Rey's eyes glistened with heavy tears in front of her.

"I delivered Ben Solo, you know," Kalonia finally breaks the awful silence.

Rey looks up and takes a long breath in, but her expression is blank, still unsure of what would happen next.

"He had more hair than I've ever seen on a baby, before or since, and it was all pitch black. I don't think he stopped screaming, ever."

Rey body relaxes and she smiles, "He still hasn't."

Kalonia pushes off the sink and stands in front of Rey, taking the young woman's hands in her own, "I'm a doctor Rey, I'm your doctor, but I was also his, once upon a time. I don't choose sides. I choose life. I think we're alike in that way."

Rey body shatters at the doctor's words, and the pent up tears of the last week coming crashing down, leaving in huge heaving sobs from her body. Kalonia draws Rey into a tight hug, giving her patient the most needed care of the day. Rey cries, unashamed, purging all her mixed emotions, a catharsis washing over her with each tear.

Finn was right, she couldn't pretend anymore. Kylo wasn't just an afterimage burned into the back of her mind, he was a part of her and he always would be. She couldn't run from that anymore.

Kalonia allows Rey all the time she needs, and holds her until the young woman steadies herself. Rey eventually leans back out of Kalonia's hold, drying her tears with her hands.

Kalonia sees the exhaustion in Rey, and knows she needs rest above all else, but her head wound still trickles blood.

"There's one more thing. And it's going to sting." Kalonia moves towards the thread and needle as she says it.

The stitches only take a moment in the capable hands of the doctor, and Rey barely notices the pain over everything else. Her eyelids droop as Kalonia applies the bacta pad over the finished stitches to accelerate healing.

Kalonia notices and knows it's time to go. She grabs Rey's hands once more and gives a final parting squeeze, "Please come visit me on the medical freighter tomorrow," she leans down until her gaze is on the same level as Rey's, looking deeply into her eyes, "Please."

Kalonia moves towards the exit, but pauses before she presses the door mechanism.

"No one here will ever fault you for choosing life Rey, remember that."

And with that, the doctor is gone.

* * *

It takes Rose much longer than usual to drift off. There was no feigning of sleeping in their own separate bunks tonight. As soon as they reached their quarters, Rose had pulled Rey into the bed with her. Rey expected a long talk, or crying, but there was none, just Rose leaning her head against Rey's shoulder as they laid silently looking up at the ceiling of the _Falcon._ It was enough just to be back here with them, and Rey's tired body grew nauseous as she imagined what tomorrow might be like, as she pictured the hurt in their eyes in hearing the truth. She leaned her head into Rose's, hoping it wouldn't be the last time Rose allowed her to share their bed.

Once Rey is sure Rose is asleep, she slips back into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. There weren't many people on the _Falcon_ now, but she needed to ensure time alone.

Rey looks at her body in the mirror, inspecting it to find differences, but there are none. She didn't know if she expected a huge change, or if she had expected anything at all. On Jakku she never expected to find anyone that she would want to share herself with, and so she never thought about what would happen if she did. She cups her breasts, before folding her arms over them and exhaling. She knows all of this is just killing time, that she'll have to face what comes with sleep eventually.

She slowly makes her way back to her bunk, careful not to wake Rose as she reassumes her position next to her. As she closes her eyes, the strumming returns, more insistent than ever. She gives a single tug back, harder this time, and it stops. She lapses into sleep almost immediately.

* * *

 **Ah! This one took a little longer than I thought it would, so thank you all for your patience. It's a whole lot of badass women, so hopefully that makes up for some of the delay.**

 **Also, I hope to have this entire fic completed by the end of this month, so there is an end in sight! I'm not sure about the chapter count yet, because while I have it outlined, I'm still unsure about how realistically paced it feels, and I don't want to just be like "And that's the end, bye." So I'll update you when I'm more aware of my own thought processes.**

 **Lastly, I just want to give a huge thank you to everyone who is reading, and to those who have favorited, followed, and left reviews. It's really amazing to feel like I'm a part of a creative community, so thank you all, truly.**

 **Next chapter should be out within the next couple days!**


	18. Chapter 18

Rey presses her bare feet into the _Falcon_ 's metal floor, letting the chill of the alloy nestle into her skin. She wills her eyes open in the dark room, and imagines what it might have been like to wake up like this everyday of her life. Who would she be if she were raised here, instead of her scorching wasteland? Who would she be if she were the one born to Leia and Han, not Ben?

She stands, careful not to shift her weight too much, her eyes fixed on Rose's peaceful face still shrouded in sleep.

Did he take his first steps where she stood? Or, more likely still, throw his first tantrum?

Carefully, she pads out into the main hallway. The thrum of the ship's engine is the only sound besides the soft beat of her feet against the grate of the floor. She is alone.

Except for the ghost of him flickering around her.

From her vantage point here in the common room, she leans her body to the side to see a series of closed doors lining the curved hallway. Everyone was still sleeping.

She closes her eyes tightly, trying to orientate herself. The brushes of his childhood skim her arms and it's as if she's tapped into something she couldn't sense before.

This place was his before it was hers.

Rey tries to push the thought out of her head. She tries to remember what day it is, counting back from Mustafar, but she's not sure how time worked in that place. If she knew what day it was, she could fall easily back into her rotation of duties, she could pretend she wasn't standing with the ghost of someone she might never see again. She could pretend there wasn't a descending black scourge upon her once everyone woke. But she doesn't know what day it is, so she stands dumbly in the center of the common room, not knowing where she belongs. It's a familiar feeling to her, surely, but one she has rarely felt in this room, where the Resistance rebuilt itself from nothing.

She feels little fingers sweep past her palm and tighten, the length of them barely covering her own small hands.

 _You belong here. You'll always belong here._

Her eyes fly open, but it's gone. She grabs her tingling hand, massaging out the touch with her opposite thumb.

A deep breath she wasn't aware she was holding escapes her and she steps forward. She realizes her muscle memory is leading her towards the cockpit.

It's a safe bet. She could be helpful there, despite everything. It would be Chewie on this early, which warmed the part of her left icy in the expanse of space.

Chewie would let her slip in with no questions and it would be a quiet morning until the rest of her friends awoke with their list of demands. With Chewie things would feel normal again, maybe for the last time. She would sit next to him and hear his little brays of welcome. He would let her take it off autopilot and feel the power of the _Falcon_ in her grasp, get to have her last moments with what had become her home, a true home, and forget the sense of impending doom rising like bile in her stomach. And if she cried, Chewie would let her, without demanding a reason why, without trying to make it better. He would just let her dry her tears in his fur and that would be enough.

Something occurs to her then: Did Chewie feel him too? The spectre of what was Ben Solo?

And had it been the same for Ben? Had Chewie pressed a young Solo to his chest to quiet his sobs? To soothe his conflicted soul?

As soon as the questions enter her, she knows the answer to all of them is yes.

She can see the paneled window of the cabin up ahead and the stream of stars running alongside them, illuminating the Wookie's fur. A spark alights in her, and that small sense of wonder she still gets when she pilots alongside him courses through her. On Jakku, she had heard stories of the Jedi and Sith, of Rebel pilots, of Skywalkers, but Chewie and Han were the idols of her youth. She had imagined herself alongside them countless times on their smuggling runs as she sat in her old flight simulator, her sandy Rebel helmet askew on her small head. She had learned Shyriiwook just because of him. And now, she was here again, next to him, and for a moment, she could almost forget about everything else.

She picks up her pace to get to the Wookie more quickly, but suddenly stops midway down the hallway. Her body sways from the sudden change.

Her periphery had lit up in orange as she passed the supply room that was her former droid hospital. It was just a flash through the open door, which she had since passed, but it was there.

Curiosity forces her to walk backwards a few steps, until she is framed by the doorway to the supply room. Poe, still in his orange flight suit, is standing unnaturally still in the room, his back turned to her, his head tilted downwards. He doesn't move to face her, unaware of her presence in the hallway.

Rey fights the urge to keep walking, to pretend she hadn't seen him, and settle into something comfortable with Chewie. But there's something about the way Poe's shoulders are slumped, it's a silhouette she has never seen the confident General ever assume. She's not ready to face Poe, not after how utterly unreadable he'd been yesterday, not after his push for information that only ended at Kalonia's insistence, but she can't leave him like this. She crosses the threshold of the supply room almost noiselessly, her soft steps hidden under the thrum of the engine.

She arcs around him, giving him room, looking at his face only, trying to read him and measure out her response. She remembers how he acted the day earlier, how he couldn't really look at her, how he didn't hug her like the rest. _Maybe I shouldn't be here._ The thought enters her head, but something else keeps her moving forward.

Finally, his shock of messy hair gives way to his face, and she looks at him in profile. Her hand comes up automatically to reach for him once she sees his expression. It's one she has never seen on Poe, ever, not since she met him all those years ago on this ship. Tears are welling in his eyes as she touches his shoulder lightly.

His head jerks towards her suddenly. His look is haunted. Rey's eyes widen in shock. This was not what she had expected. Her heart beat picks up, and fear courses through her. She had never seen Poe in a state of disrepair. He was always steadfast in his hope, always a consummate leader, but now, there is a terror in him. Her grip tightens around his arm unconsciously. He was the rock that held this all together. Even in the darkest of days, he was a beam of fire and faith, leading them forward. And now, he looks just as scared she is, and that terrifies her more than anything.

She searches his face, and wants to pull him into a hug, but she stops herself, unsure of everything. It felt like her foundation was crumbling around her looking into his eyes.

Poe's mouth opens as if to say something, but nothing comes out. Instead, his arms come up slightly, full of something. Rey turns her head to face what is in front of him for the first time.

In his hand is R2's motherboard. On the table around him lay pieces of the droid.

Rey's face turns sharply back to him, her shock deepening. His expression is full of shame and despair, and a deep confusion surges deep into Rey's sinew and across her face.

"Poe?" her voice is cautious and soft. She almost can't eke his short name out before a tear falls down her face.

"I don't know what I'm doing," he turns away from her and back to the droid, he can't face her. His hands are shaking.

"It's okay, I can help you," her voice is tight, the lining of her throat starting to burn. She looks down at the remains of what was R2, "He was damaged in the quake?"

Poe doesn't answer, he just continues to look down at R2's pieces. She looks to him and then back to the droid. R2 was fully deconstructed, each piece almost catalogued. There were no haphazard dents or random breaks indicative of a fall. Everything was clean, every bolt was unscrewed, his motherboard cleanly popped out of its home. A realization washes over Rey and she steps back, her touch falling from Poe's arm.

"You did this." Rey's whole body is running in waves and she parts her lips as a nausea threatens to upend her.

Poe dips his head down, and his eyes squeeze shut, as if the weight of it was all too much. He breathes in, the sound of the rushing air almost painful against his lungs, before his face scrunches in agony. He nods to the ground, eyes still closed deep in guilt.

"Why? Why would you do this?" It comes out slow, bathed in the rasp of her breath.

"I thought Kylo Ren infected him. Jumbled his coding."

Rey's breathing picks up, stuttering in her chest at the mention of Kylo. She realizes she had been thinking of Ben since she woke, but not Kylo. What had he done when she was unconscious?

"Why would you think that?" Her mind is swirling with the possibilities. Had Kylo hurt them? Had he been a threat?

"R2 defended him. He said that he wasn't dangerous to us, that he wouldn't hurt us. It was a trick, like Threepio. But Threepio wasn't a trick, was he?" Poe turns his head to look at Rey directly now, and she sees just how red his eyes have become.

Rey's body stiffens when she looks at him. Her eyes sting and she blinks rapidly to waylay the pain. Her lips part and head turns from side to side in a slight no.

Poe turns back and looks at the motherboard in his hand, "I was going to erase him. I was going to wipe him after everything he's done for us, everything he's done for the galaxy. I was going to destroy him because I thought Kylo Ren got into his head."

"But you didn't."

"I realized that if I destroyed him, I would have to do something I could never do: I would have to destroy you too, because Kylo Ren is in your head, isn't he?"

Rey swallows hard enough for Poe to see the tendons in her throat flexing. He bores holes into her with his eyes and she can't move, as if affixed by his glare. They stand like that for a few moments, before Rey's chin dips into the smallest of nods.

Poe drops the motherboard, and it clamors against the rest of what was R2. His hand comes up to his forehead, clutching it loosely with his fingers, as if he hadn't expected her to answer in the affirmative. Rey can almost see Poe's brain start working again, and it's painful, the amount of uncertainty riddling him so evident.

"I thought I was protecting you from him. I thought I could protect you from him." Poe's voice starts to raise.

"It's not like that…"

"But I can't protect anything, Rey. Not you, not them." The deep timbre of his yelling bounces off the durasteel. He points to the door, still open, to the thousands of Resistance fighters he was responsible for, "Every decision that I make means death to some of them. I used to call that honor. Now I don't know what that means."

"Poe, this isn't you…"

"Isn't it? I'm a warmonger. Isn't that evident now? Look at me Rey, I'm dismembering a friend because I thought the enemy had gotten to him. I'm just like them."

Rey shakes her head. He's lost the thread. This war got to everyone, eventually. But she never thought it would ever get to Poe.

"Last night, I was going to press you, even though I knew you were hurt, even though I knew you needed rest. I wanted you to suffer. Why? Why would I want that Rey? What is happening to me?"

She closes the distance between them in an instant, "Nothing. Nothing. Look at me Poe." She takes his face in her hands, and presses into his beard until she hits the chin underneath, "You're a good person. This doesn't change that. It's this war. It's gone on too long."

"It's not going to end."

"No. It's not. But we'll keep fighting, because it's the right thing to do. Because there's still light in this galaxy, even if it's shrouded in darkness, and that's worth fighting for."

Rey's hands move from his face and settle down on his shoulders.

A beat passes between them. His eyes descend down to the ground between them, breaking their mutual stare, before he speaks, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"No, Rey, I'm sorry. You don't have to explain, about Kylo Ren or anything. I have no right. I trust you, and I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry."

Her hands fall from his body and she steps back, giving him a sorrowful smile. Her gaze moves to R2 next to him and he turns to face the droid.

Rey slowly moves to the table, her hands moving out to skim over R2's parts, her fingers fretting over the blue and silver pieces.

"What will we do? Where do we go from here?" Poe asks, as he moves to face the droid too.

"We rebuild, just like we always do," Rey looks up at him. The student becomes the master.

Without words, they begin to mend him together, to make it right. It feels like it does when they're in the cockpit together. They work seamlessly, anticipating the other's needs. Rey knows Poe will need the sonic screwdriver before he does, and gently places it in his hands. As she does, a smile blooms across his face, the first she has seen from him since her return from Mustafar. It lets her know it will be okay, and she smiles too.

"How do you do it?" Poe asks, feeling the light return to him because of this small wonder they found so many years ago on Jakku.

"Do what?"

"See the good in people, even when they've let you down?"

"Oh, you know, years of practice," she says, breaking the weight of it all. She chuckles and he does too.

Before they settle though, she grabs Poe's hand and squeezes it. _You didn't let me down._ It's unspoken but it's there. He nods and picks up R2's recharge coupling.

"Where does this go?" he looks at the piece of machinery and then back to Rey.

Rey's head falls to the side, feigning playful exhaustion, "Let me show you."

They work for hours more, and Connix comes in at least a dozen times trying to pull Poe to his duties, but he stays and helps Rey until R2 is back together again. Rey shows him how to reattach the motherboard, letting him be the one to restore R2's conscious mind. When they switch him on, Rey swears she hears R2 and Poe simultaneously breathe a sigh of relief.

* * *

The next few days ease the tension on the _Falcon_ , as they settle back into their routines. Finn and Rose don't push anymore about Kylo, and Rey knows Poe must have talked to them.

War necessitates that they move on and not dwell on things for too long. The machine needs to be stoked, and so they resume, repairing what had been damaged in their first real foray back in the arena.

The anticipation Rey feels about seeing Kylo again quickly turns to dread in her stomach, and she can't bring herself to meditate. She's thankful that the work is plentiful on the ships. Her days are filled with oil stains and problem solving, and her nights are dark and dreamless.

Kylo tries to dig through to her only once, and when he does she gently pushes him back. It feels like the _Falcon_ door closing slowly between them again, and even though she hates that feeling, she knows she has to. She's not ready.

But she's still there. She lets him know in the strums across the thread that bind them to one another. They come randomly now, not just behind closed eyes. More often than not, it will be him to pluck first, sending vibrations deep into her soul, and she will answer it, letting him know he's not alone.

Less often it is her who touches it first, needing to know he's safe, needing him to know she hasn't left, not truly. His response is always immediate.

They play like this for a few days, soft two-tone melodies on each other's heart across the galaxy, his frequency always so much lower than hers, so much needier. She imagines it like a song, the refrain of which only the two of them would ever be able to comprehend. It was the theme of them, and filled her universe with something she had been denied so long, first by fate, then by her own hand. It was like the force was singing, something true and rich, something to be treasured.

Until Finn made it hollow.

They're squeezed between the walls of a damaged Pathfinder-class scout ship docked into an ancient MC80a Star Cruiser when he does. Most everything they have is ancient, the scraps of a Rebellion whose valiant efforts and legends threatened to be unwritten in this new order.

Rey is rewiring its blown out circuitry, repairing the scars of the most recent battle, while next to her, Finn is coiling her finished product into place. Behind them, welders are reforming the outer hull of the ship with scraps of durasteel cobbled together in haste.

Her saber weighs on her belt for the first time in days. Finn had suggested that they resume their training together after their repairs, and it all excites her. The work, the promise of training, being with Finn again, it all feels right. They work in tandem, in a comfortable silence that predicates their friendship. It feels normal to Rey and she starts to smile as she works.

"What are you smiling about?" Finn asks, looking at his work intently.

"This."

"Oh yeah, definitely. Rebuilding optical relays always puts a smile on my face," his voice is monotone, belying the sarcasm beneath it.

"You know what I mean." Rey hoffs. Finn had been spending too much time with Poe.

"I do." Finn replies, now wearing his own grin.

Suddenly, a groan erupts from behind them and they immediately stand flush against their work. The hull they had been working against starts to detach from its bindings, and the shouts of the welders to the workers below is immediate. Finn holds an arm out in front of Rey, his protective instincts not quite gone after all these years, even despite his deep knowledge of Rey's capabilities. Rey doesn't have time to roll her eyes or push his arm away, because the metal is going to fall, and she can feel the people below through the fibers now always apparent to her in the force.

Rey reaches her arm out in a second of pure instinct. The metal moans in the air, stilled above the workers, who scatter from underneath its shadow. Slowly, slowly, she uses the force to set it down gently on the ground below.

Finn's breath hitches in awe, "So you can do that, too."

Rey's head slowly turns to him,"What do you mean 'too'?"

"On Mustafar, Kylo Ren did that. He used the force to stop one of the walkways from hitting you." Rey's face scrunches as Finn talks and he realizes she doesn't know, "Poe didn't tell you?"

Rey's ears start to ring. "What do you mean, hitting me?"

"You don't know?"

Rey shakes her head.

"The reason we left him alive is because he saved you. He was going to leave, but when the walkway swung loose, he came back for you and stopped it. Just like that," Finn points to the metal below, now surrounded by disbelieving Resistance fighters.

Rey looks back and forth between Finn's eyes, then breaks the gaze and looks out to nothing, her lips parting slightly and her head shaking no. She was so stupid. "I have to go," the words rush out of her in a whisper, but Finn nods, as if he knows.

She slips off the ship easily, dashing out of the hole the metal was meant to repair. Her lithe body runs down the convex siding, pushing back to the posterior wing. It would be an impressive sight to behold, if anyone below was watching her. Instead, they were all still agape around the hull, tittering. She hits the ground softly, and at once, all their eyes are on her. She smiles weakly at them before turning to leave.

"You could have used the ramp you know!" Finn yells after her, as she wades through her appreciative comrades, her back alight in small pats of gruff gratitude.

All of it is almost static, her sense of feeling dulled by her sense of purpose. She needs to see him. She needs to. Why had she run away again? Why had she let fear keep him from her?

She finds the first empty room and slips into it, closing the door behind her.

She turns around and sees the room for what it truly is: a crew's quarters. Two bunk beds line each wall. Towels and jackets hang from the railings. As she moves toward the center of the room to sit, she sees pictures lining the walls of each bunk. She recognizes most of the pictures as funny shots from the hangars of the Black Squadron, posing extravagantly in front of their original X-Wings. Poe's face dances in the corners of some of them, next to people she doesn't recognize. She knows they must be people who died before she even joined the Resistance. Her eyes move onto more pictures, of homes she will never see, of families that she wasn't sure existed anymore. She finds them odd, pictures, having never had one of herself. Who were they for? What purpose did they serve, really?

As she thinks it, her vision sets upon a smiling young woman with Rose's eyes. _Paige._ She had never seen a picture of Paige, but she knew. A longing sets in her stomach and an understanding. Pictures were proof. Proof of life, proof that we had loved and were loved in returned.

She realizes she doesn't have any pictures with Rose or Finn or Poe or Chewie. She commits herself to remedy that as soon as possible.

This was the Black Squadron looking at her from the walls. This was their proof of life. She looks at her watch. Their rotation would still be out for another two hours. She had time. She remembers her purpose and settles.

She stretches her neck around and places her hands on either knee and breathes. It had only been a few weeks since she meditated, but it feels strange again, as if she were doing it for the first time. A ball of tension grows in her stomach, not knowing what to do when she sees him, what to expect. She almost loses her nerve and stands up, but she remembers the pictures. Would there ever be proof of what her and Kylo meant to each other? _Could_ there ever be proof? The hope that maybe one day there could be stills her and keeps her steady.

She takes one long drag of breath in and her eyes drift shut. When she exhales, she feels the force bob through her and take her. She forgets all the apprehension for a moment, letting it soothe out her tired nerves, until a thick queasiness overtakes her.

She opens her eyes and she's in the plane, but everything is moving so fast, blurring around her. It feels like a vortex, like the storms that rained harsh pellets of sand in her youth. She feels like she's being dragged, and it should scare her, but it doesn't. She allows her body to be taken.

It's black now, and quick glints of light scatter around her. She closes her eyes again to try to find something secure and unmoving. She slows, but the darkness does not turn into the familiar grey static of the plane. Instead, it morphs into something more solid. She feels wetness on her face, but she's not crying, and beneath her, the ground feels soft. She's standing now and she hears thunder. The gleams around her start to make sense, it's lightning bouncing off sideways sweeping rain. She turns. She knows what comes next.

She knows she's not alone.

Because she's seen this before.

Seven figures stand before her in the undulating fabric of this place, one towering above the rest. She feels her chest heave, the vision from Maz's cellar playing out in front of her, but different, so different. They're blurs, not fully formed humans, like they had been. Just blurs. But she knows it's Kylo in the middle. She knows before she sees the red cross of his saber burn into the darkness.

It's different, because this time she takes a step forward, instead of a step back.

Suddenly, the six smaller figures spread out in a formation, but his stays in front of her.

There is movement everywhere, flanking her, and her eyes narrow in confusion before she realizes.

 _They're fighting._

She recognizes their positions. They're the same stances she practices with Finn, except more skillful, more explosive. She knows by the look of it that this wasn't normal training, their movements are too fluid, there's no skittering to avoid the kill, but she can't their opponent, only them. Her brain swirls.

These are his Knights.

She had only ever seen his Knights in that vision. He so rarely calls upon them she had forgotten they exist. She had never sensed them in this force plane, but she knew they were force sensitive, knew that they had been Luke's students once too. Why had she never seen them before? And why would they be here now?

As she considers them, something suddenly cracks. She looks to her left as one of the shadows stumbles. The body jerks two more times before crumbling to the ground. None of the other figures falter, no one rushes to its side. Rey watches as the body twitches, its edges turning from opaque to translucent. Her top half lurches towards it. _They shouldn't die alone._

Before the rest of her body can think to move, she hears another crack from her right.

 _No._

His Knights are falling.

This wasn't an exercise. This wasn't practice. This was battle. But all Resistance troops were still pulled back to repair, she would feel it if they weren't. No, this was something different. But how could it be? Who was the enemy if not the Resistance?

From behind her, whispers pick up in the ether. She closes her eyes, even though she doesn't want to, to try to catch something that makes sense. It had done this before, she knows this game, she knows the force is trying to tell her something.

"He needs your help."

She whips around and it all stops, the whispers, the thunder, it all stops. The voice is gone, but its Coruscanti accent lays heavy on her ears.

Her neck prickles and she turns just her head to see Kylo's figure standing closer in her peripheral vision, his weapon stilled.

He can feel her.

Without thought, she turns to fully face him.

 _Run._

It's his voice in her head, its undertones laden in a fear she couldn't imagine coming from him.

 _Please._

She reaches her hand out to his face.

 _Don't._

It's the last thing she hears in the silence, before she is pulled through to him.

He tries to get through once, but she pushes. Why does she push? She was so afraid, of what he had said. Or thought. She knew love. She knew it when Rose laid next to her or Finn kissed the top of her head or Poe smiled at her from across the room.


	19. Chapter 19

TW: Things get VERY violent. If that concerns you, skip to the chapter notes at the end and I'll give a synopsis.

* * *

All her senses overload.

The sound comes first. Its waves are crushing, violently filling the empty space around her. The noise is so cacophonous it sounds like no noise at all, a static thunder cancelling itself out.

The lights are next, blowing out her vision, constricting her pupils painfully. Everything is overexposed, bathed in a blinding white. She takes a sharp breath and squeezes her eyes shut, straining the muscles there to block out any trace of light.

She feels the droplets from the force plane bundle on her skin as the hair on her arms stands up. The thrashing wind is gone, and all that remains is cool, dead air, stagnating against her wet skin. She might shiver if she knew what was happening, but she doesn't, so instead she stands festering in place.

All she is sure about is the feeling of his skin under her palm, her only beacon in this chaos. Her hand starts to slip from his face, her mind screaming for it back, to protect her from the new elements. Her body, though, her body wants to keep it on him, wants her touch to never leave him.

She feels light stubble scrape against her as it skitters down, threatening to fall. He catches her hand in his own before her touch can slip, and keeps her there, keeping her linked to her anchor though this turmoil.

Everything else is too much. The light is too much, the sound is too much, the air is too heavy, and then she hears him, feels his jaw move under her touch.

"Rey."

Everything disentangles at his voice, and she can hear it then: the unmistakable sharp reverb of blaster fire. The swell of light evens itself and she opens her eyes to make out his face. It's sheer terror.

This was a mistake. She's nothing but a distraction.

She tears from his gaze and looks to her left, towards the pings of munitions. The ground is blanketed in white, and she thinks for a moment in her haze that they're in the snow again. Somehow, they're always in snow, in light. That or dark, dark caves. Black and white. It must be a cosmic joke, like so much of what concerns the two of them.

She blinks to clear the blur from her eyes.

The familiar sheen of white armor gleams beneath her.

It's not snow.

The bodies are everywhere, everywhere, and she can't see the ground. She steps closer to Kylo instinctively, her mouth open.

Dozens of lives. Dozens of lives like Finn, all nothing but ground cover now. Spots of black and red dot their armor.

She follows the nebula of the dead up the hallway before she sees where the blaster fire originates from.

A only a few Stormtroopers are left, shaking as they fire wildly down the now empty hallway.

Rey stands shocked in place, her hand still on Kylo's cheek, staring at the soldiers. Ren's remaining Knights move effortlessly through the bodies to serve as a shield between the reunited and the shooters.

Kylo's eyes are the only one not focused on the enemy. He hasn't stopped looking at Rey since she materialized out of the ether. His body is rigid under her touch, his saber is still lit, but it stands paralyzed in his grip like the rest of him. In this, his most desperate hour, she is there.

He takes this time, in the eye of the storm, to take her in, her freckles, her skin clutching impossibly onto the brushes sun still swept across it, her lips. He stops. Her lips. He couldn't think out them now.

But she's here. All of her. For him. Not out of fear, not out of displaced loyalty, not to see him fall. But for him, all of him.

He's not alone.

Rey watches as the Knights close in on the Troopers, their melee weapons menacing. The blaster fire seems to be purposefully missing, and she imagines the people inside the white armor. They'd be younger than her, as young as Finn was when she met him, newly defected, probably. She thinks to him now. How desperate he had been for touch, for connection, after a lifetime of harshness.

At her last thought, the final Stormtrooper falls. Rey watches as the Knight who dealt the blow struggles slightly to dislodge his weapon from deep inside the trooper's skull.

Rey has been a soldier for three years. She has seen death, and destruction, and mayhem. But she has never seen so many dead in one place. The reality of war could go unseen, often, on the scale they played on. She had seen Star Destroyers implode, had cheered on when squadrons were wiped out by Poe and his pilots' steady hands, and through that all, she could always say it was just a ship, it was just a simulation. When she struggled to sleep at night, she could forget the lives she knew were ended, instead making them into something faceless and calling them enemies. A single story of thousands of lives. The enemy.

But here, it is visceral. The bodies beneath her twitch their last electrical pulses, and she thinks of Finn.

What was this then? What had she stumbled upon? Kylo and his Knights aren't killing the enemy here. They are killing their own. Why?

Before she can turn to open her mouth, to look at him for the first time, she hears it.

The steady tempo seems to mock the beat of her heart. It clashes against the sound of her blood in her ears. It is unmistakable. Hundreds of steps landing at the same time. The precision of cruel indoctrination echoes through the hallway. The next horde is making their way down the adjacent hallway, an expandable vanguard meant only to face their death at the hands of Ren and his Knights, in an attempt to exhaust them even a little.

To someone, this was a fair trade.

Rey stands, her gaze never wandering from the direction of the sound. She wants to see. She anticipates the white armor, the sheen of it blinding. She anticipates the burn of her stomach lining at the sight of them, knowing, knowing anyone of them could be just like her best friend if given the chance.

But the shock of white never comes. Instead, when the sound materializes at the end of the opposite hallway into figures, she is met with a wall of black. Black armor mirroring black robes, in a sea of white. And then there is her, a tan dot on a monochrome background.

No, these weren't Stormtroopers. These were something else.

Before she can think, the matte black of the Knights blurs with the glossy black of the new soldiers. Her feet are off the ground and something is pulling her away.

His arms are around her waist, gliding her into an entryway alcove shielded from the eruption of new violence in the hallway. Sharp pings ring out and the air next to them alights in streaks of neon red. Rey's eyes go wide, thinking of the four against dozens, but Kylo seems calm, knowing the strengths of his Knights better than she does.

He is standing over her, pinning her almost uncomfortably to the wall. She feels his body press against hers, the rush of both their blood beating out to each other in the places where their bodies meet, trying to find each other once again.

Everything in her stills. They hadn't touched through the bond in so long, and it is as real as ever. How is it possible that she can feel him like this? She is a ghost. A phantom come to haunt him in this chaos.

Her face is staring straight into his chest, covered in his Supreme Leader costume once again. A man playing dress up.

She can feel his heavy breath on her face, the strands of hair which frame her head moving slightly against her skin with every inhale and exhale. They stand frozen for longer than they should, considering. It is as if her gaze is fixed in front of her, too afraid to meet his eyes as everything else comes back to her.

Not one to back down, she finally looks up at him, his eyes are almost black staring straight down at her. There is so much behind them. Fear, admiration, anger, adoration, disbelief.

And something else that she doesn't want to face yet, can't face yet.

"Why are you here?" he asks, and he just wants her to say it. Say it. He wants to hear it fall from her lips, so much that everything else around them evaporates until it's just his soul addressing hers.

She hears him, but the question doesn't register as she feels the pull of him, feels both his want and hers at the same time. His lips part slightly and her chest swells. They can't do this, not now, not with literal rivers of blood running inches from them. She tenses as his face moves closer to hers, her body going rigid against his and he stops inches from her.

His eyes dart back and forth between hers, as if searching her for the source of her apprehension. His heart drops and the ache in his heart immediately and instinctually shields itself from her once again.

He was wrong. He had misread. Maybe she didn't even mean to be here. Maybe the force brought her here unwilling, like it used to.

She had been giving him only the most miniscule of contact of the past week, since Mustafar, since he had thought the truth and she had heard it.

And it had been too much for her. He had scared her. Of course she wouldn't want him, not like that, not with everything she had. Not the way he wanted her.

He moves to rest his head on her shoulder, but her upper body twists away from him and closer to the edge of the alcove. He can't redirect his movement fast enough and his head settles against the durasteel warmed by where her body was a millisecond ago.

He still pins her to the wall with his lower body, unable to give up the contact there, but their upper bodies don't line up anymore. It was almost always like this between them, the connection always there, but one of them was always twisting away from it. He thought it would be different after they had given themselves so completely to one another. He thought wrong.

His sad internal monologue is broken by her cool voice, "What are they?" she jerks her head towards the soldiers. She says it casually, as if there wasn't an intense battle happening yards away. As if this wasn't happening between them, as if she hadn't just silently rejected him.

"Death troopers," the answer is muffled into the wall. He tries to gather himself. The acid of adrenaline which had been coursing through his veins in the fight is painful now, and he can almost feel his every muscle fiber as they crush into hers.

Rey cocks her head to the side, and her curiosity wins out over her fear. She turns her head slightly, to gaze out past the corner of the alcove, her body slipping against Kylo's as she does, distracting him with the slight friction. The Knights are impressive, their fighting styles are advanced and varied. Each carries a different weapon, all melee variations on sabers. The weapons are admirable, and she notices they do their jobs well, as droves of the enemy die quickly under their operation, but none are quite as clean or efficient as the classic design of a lightsaber.

She watches as the black cloaks float over the Death troopers, aerial assaults timed in precision. It is beautiful, artful, the way they spin above the crowd. Not like her fighting, which is lumbering and all about brute power. She realizes Kylo and her are the same in that.

She is so entranced by their movements, by how quickly they are tearing through the seemingly elite squadron, that she almost fails to see a black mask turn slightly to look straight at her. Their gaze runs like an arrow through the force though, and she is able to tuck her head back right before a blast pierces the corner where her head was, taking out a chunk with it.

Kylo grabs her and shoves her deeper into the niche.

"What the fuck Rey?" the deep tremor of his voice echoes through her, before something occurs to him and his face twists in confusion, "Could they see you?"

"Those are your soldiers," she breathes out, ignoring his question for the second time that day.

"They were. Now they're Hux's soldiers."

It takes Rey only a moment.

"That fucking weasel."

Kylo huffs out a single, amused grunt, "He's been planning this since Snoke's death. When I was with you, he took it as his chance."

"How many did he turn?"

Kylo turns his face away from hers, not able to look at her growing worry.

"How many, Kylo?"

"Thousands."

Rey's face drops, sending shocks down Kylo's spine.

"That looks an awful lot like concern on your face."

It's Rey's turn to search his eyes, a crease forming as her eyes narrow, "Don't play this game, not now."

"You're the one…"

"Kylo," she sets her hands on either side of his face, feeling his scar ribbon beneath her touch, "Tell me you know what you're doing." He can feel her biceps tense through her touch, underscoring her fervency.

He almost melts into her as his heart seizes at her touch. She was concerned for him. She was touching him. Maybe he was wrong, maybe he had been the one to misread. He feels drunk in her hands, his entire body running in waves of warmth, "I've been planning too."

She knows what he is not saying. _Don't worry, I won't leave you. I could never leave you._

But she also knows that there is no way he and his Knights can survive in direct combat like this forever. He has already lost two, and while the remaining were formidable, it was five against an army. She needs to get to him, to get him out of this place. She needs to know where he is.

"Where are we? What ship?"

"The _Discord_ ," the information is offered so freely she has to stop her body from reeling away.

Rey's eyebrows knit as she stares into his eyes. He was so close to her she could feel the humidity from his sweat, the radiating heat of his body.

"It's my flagship," he continues, noticing her confusion.

Rey had studied the First Order Fleet with the Resistance, had lobbied back and forth with ideas about strategic attacks in long, not so sober nights spent in the War Room. Never, was a ship called the _Discord_ mentioned.

"What _kind_ of ship is it?" she asks in pure curiosity.

"It's a dreadnought."

Rey's hands drop from his face, never having imagined that would be the true answer to her question. _No._ How? The Resistance had destroyed all the First Order's dreadnoughts. _The Supremacy, the Fulminatrix_ , they were long gone. How had they rebuilt an entire dreadnought when the Resistance had only scraped together a patchwork of rusted ships from the Rebel Alliance era?

He looks at her, hearing her frenzied thoughts from across the Universe.

"Now you know."

Rey opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, she feels something warm against her leg where Kylo leans into her.

The echoes of the clash in the hallway beside them grow closer. Rey tries to steady herself from the myriad of opposing emotions assaulting her from every angle.

She breathes in, needing to know, feeling a growing warmth blossoming on her thigh. She places her hands on either side of his broad torso and pushes, slightly, to get a clearer look at her thigh.

A bright red wetness flourishes against the tan of her leggings, reaching out amongst the threads slowly, forming distributaries on her leg. She braces him with one hand, noticing he does not let up his weight to help her, and presses the pads of her fingers into it, sticky under her touch, looking for her wound.

But she has none.

Her eyes quickly dart to the part of him that pressed there, and she sees it, his shiny wet black pant leg, slick with his blood. And above that, the flap of skin, hanging loose away from him, sticking to his clothes. The blood that spilled immediately camouflaged by the facade of his ebony costume.

Something flashes through her that she hadn't felt since Ahch-To, since she learned of Luke's betrayal, of the hurt he had caused Ben. She had been willing to hurt Luke back, to crush him against the slippery rocks, to hear his skull crack against the thrashes of the Ahch-To rain. Because he had hurt him.

And now, he was hurt again. _They_ had hurt him.

"Rey, it's okay, I'm okay..."

Before he can finish, before he can catch her, before he realizes she is gone, she is out in the hallway with his Knights, who were closer than Rey had anticipated, having been pushed back deeper into the hall by the troops.

On instinct she reaches for her saber and ignites it, running through the Knights to advance on the Death troopers directly.

The ground is uneven with bodies, but her steps are sure, and she is guiding herself through them without thought, always finding the best possible foothold.

Her body clashes with the Death troopers. She is quick, too quick to register as something new, as a new player entered the game.

In the seconds it takes them to recognize something different, to register their own surprise in the face of this new element, her saber is twisted through them, their military grade, advanced armor reduced to nothing in the face of her saberstaff.

She twirls her saber effortlessly, as if she were just training, as if it were just slicing through air, and not meat and flesh.

Before she knows what she is doing, before she can gasp at her reaction, before she can think _how is this possible?_ A perfect crop of bodies armored in black rest on top of their Stormtrooper predecessors, a bruise on their surface.

Everyone stops moving. The Death troopers, the Knights, the Supreme Leader now standing in the middle of the hallway, they're all completely frozen, staring at The Last Jedi in her field of death.

The air rushes back in, and the Death troopers resume their advance. But almost as quickly as they do, the Knights of Ren surge forward into the expanse left empty by Rey's outburst, hacking through the guard. Rey backs up, now ensconced by the protective Knights, and looks down at herself in disbelief.

She turns to Kylo, who is looking at her with the same awe. The same thoughts rush through both their minds.

How? How could she do this? This wasn't force projection, there was no way.

Of course her powers had grew, but this? Being able to fight from across the galaxy? This was something else, some new stage in their bond. No, some new stage in the Force itself. The same thoughts rush through both their minds.

He walks towards her, his steps picking up pace until he is almost running towards her down the expanse of the hallway. His legs work, the wound he carries only a sting somewhere in the back of his mind.

She realizes it was a flesh wound as he bounds towards her. She had waylaid so many because of a flesh wound. And she doesn't even care, not now. Because no one would hurt him, ever, not while she breathed.

He hears her thoughts and his steps slow as he approaches her. They are chest to chest once again.

He was so wrong. She had come for him, for him, for all of him, to protect him, to fight for him. He wasn't alone.

Both their eyes are searching now, knowing what comes next.

"Ready?" she asks.

"Always."

And with that, they are back to back once again as the Knights are pushed back and the guard envelops their forms.

The planes of their backs glide against one another as they parry and lunge. They stay like this, using each other for leverage, until necessity dictates that they separate. There are so many, and they come at them in waves. They are less skilled than the Praetorian guard, but have more skills than Stormtroopers. Rey is barely able to keep up, and her arms burn with the tiny scratches of deflected blasts. She had trained for this surely, but most of her combat was one-on-one, preparing for the proverbial final showdown with Ren. Now, she fights by his side, and the numbers were much higher than one-to-one.

 _There are too many Rey, we need to fall back._

 _I have an idea. Trust me?_

Their eyes meet from across the hall. His head dips in a slight nod, and with that, the red-blue glow of her saber is gone, and she disappears, digging deeper into the mass of death troopers.

Kylo's eyes grow huge. She had sheathed her weapon in the middle of the enemy. Before he can think though, before he can question it, he is deflecting a blast with the edge of his saber, reflecting it back and hitting the trooper who had shot it.

It seems like an eternity passes, but in reality, it is only minutes. He can feel her link through the force, feel her strong and pulsing and he knows she is okay, but a black pit grows in him the longer he doesn't have eyes on her.

He trusts her though. Trusts her skills, trusts her power, her tenacity, so he pushes the feeling down.

His saber hisses through the chest of a death trooper he had slipped behind when he hears her voice in his head.

 _Call my saber._

 _What?_

 _Trust me._

He reaches out, his hand stretching out in front of the horde, and he wills it to him. His grandfather's crystals are almost gleeful, feeling them working together like this.

As he does, the sound of spurting of blood and splitting bone play in a round, rolling like a distant wave growing closer to the shore.

He sees it then. The death troopers start falling grotesquely, their bodies cut in half, tops sliding off bottoms.

The saber spans a great portion of the hallway when it lays horizontal. But the soldiers closest to the walls on the periphery are too far out of its reach. All they can do is watch in horror as their brethren are sliced apart right next to them. All fighting ceases over the sounds of agony.

When the saber meets his palm, he shudders at how both how right and how wrong it feels in his grasp.

The feeling is momentary, because he can see her again. As if a sea has been parted, she stands at the opposite end of the hallway, framed by the troopers shocked into submission.

Her tunic is covered in spurts of dribbled blood, but none of it is her own.

It's her. It's only ever been her.

He feels both his own saber and hers in his hands, feels their dual power undulating slightly in his soul. He realizes then she is unarmed.

So do they.

In an instant all their blasters are focused in on her distant figure.

His hand is out again, and a dozen neon red blasts suspend in the air as they leave their muzzles, far away from threatening Rey.

With a twist, they are launched back to their point of origin, and all the remaining Death troopers fall in unison.

Kylo breathes deeply at the effort, drained. He wants to fall to his knees, but as he considers it, he sees Rey growing closer to him. He can stay standing.

When she gets to him, her hand takes his, and everything is okay again.

They are only granted a moment of silence before the low grumble of marching picks up somewhere deep inside the dreadnought's belly.

"Kylo, we need to retreat. There's no way we can keep this up." Rey's looks towards the new voice. It's modulated, and for a moment, Rey thinks this Knight might be a droid, but soon her thoughts are flooded by the mask Kylo wore the first time they had ever met, and know that's not the case.

He tightens his grip on her hand and they're walking away, down the hallway. The marching seems to be coming from every direction now, almost impossibly lock step. It feels as if the whole ship, the whole dreadnought, which is large enough to be its own principality almost, is vibrating with the efficiency of it.

They head down a hallway only to be met with a wall of black armor.

They turn in an about face, and another wave, this time of white, stands in front of them.

Flanked on either side of the hallway, Kylo uses the knowledge of his flagship against them. He reaches out and closes the airtight locks on either side of them, locking the troops out, but locking them into an area no larger than the common room on the _Falcon_. The sounds of marching stop abruptly with the clanging of the airtight doors. An eerie silence descends, pulsing with the sounds of all of them breathing in and out almost in unison. It's Rey's only clue that his Knights are in fact living creatures and not programmed killing machines.

Rey's honed instincts take over and her whole body spins, looking for an escape. It doesn't take her long, the schematics of ships like this all burned into her head. She will always be a scavenger. Always.

She knocks on the durasteel floor, looking for the hollow. Dense deep knocks give way to sharp echoes. She looks up to the closest Knight, cloaked in gear that would have frightened her, once. Once, but not any longer.

"Help me?"

The Knight looks to Kylo, still reeling a bit from his immense manipulation of the force to save Rey. Kylo nods and the Knight immediately kneels down to Rey's level. They manage the get their fingers under the floor paneling and prop it up and over, revealing a duct system below.

Once she sees it, she knows exactly what must happen next. The only difficulty would be convincing Kylo.

She walks over to him, the room still quiet, the troops outside obviously waiting for direction.

As she does, she rips the bottom of her flowing tunic, slowly ratcheting it away from the rest. She kneels down in front of him and immediately his whole body tenses into a solid block, seeing her on her knees in front of him. She notices and rolls her eyes, grabbing his injured thigh and wrapping it, trying to control the bleed. He could be tracked by his blood, this she knew. She pulled tighter and knotted the makeshift bandage. He needed to become invisible in order for this to work.

She stands and looks at him, almost defiantly, before motioning to the hole in the floor.

"Go," it comes out of her softly, but commanding at the same time.

"Rey, no."

"You need to run. I can hold them off." Kylo shakes his head in terror and disbelief at her words. "I need you to go. I need you to stay safe."

Kylo shakes his head. Rey grabs his chin in her hand, "Please, please. Go."

"I'm not leaving you."

"I'm not really here, Kylo."

She knew she would meet this resolve, but knows this is the only way, knows she needs to find some way for him to understand, so she continues.

"Listen, there's too many of them. You've been fighting waves of them all day. You've lost two men and you're all exhausted." She looks around to his silent Knights as she says it, before meeting Kylo's eyes once again, "This is what Hux wants. He has an unlimited supply of what he sees as expendable parts. And there's five of you. There's no counterattack, not like this. Brute force will only get you this far." Rey senses the troops gathering from behind the jammed door, their vibrations raw in the force. "Is there anyone else, besides them," Rey's head jerks to the still Knights behind them, "that's loyal to you? That you can still trust?"

Kylo nods.

"Find them. We're on a Dreadnought. It could be days before they find you again if you're smart. Be smart, Kylo."

The door next to them ignites in sparks. They turn their head at the same time and his grasp on her tightens. They're burning their way through.

Rey turns back to him, "You need to run."

But he stays shock still in front of her. His Knights don't waver, waiting for a signal from their leader.

The steel grows more hot, the red lightening into orange and white, approaching its melting point.

"Please, go, please."

 _I can't...not without..._

Rey breathes in sharply, her lips pursing in disbelief, "Oh for fuck's sake."

She grabs his collar and pulls him down to her. She wants the kiss to be crushing, to prove a point. But instead, when their lips meet, it's soft. He opens up to her, and their breath hitches through their noses in unison. His hands find her face and it feels like the only thing right in the entire Galaxy, this kiss.

When they break, she rests her forehead on his as he's bent down to her, "You will never get to kiss me like that, or any other way, ever again if you don't go. Now."

He moves from her and she thinks she sees the corners of his lips move ever so slightly up, but she can't be sure.

He leans into her once more and Rey almost wants to scream that now wasn't the time for a full romantic interlude, the heat from the melting door reaching its pitch, but instead of kissing her again, his lips brush against her ear.

The numbers he whispers to her don't make sense, but she knows they will, and as soon as they break, she is repeating them over and over again in an effort to memorize them.

Her concentration is so great that she doesn't notice when he is almost gone, his Knights already disappeared into the system below. His lower body is already in the duct before she breaks her rote reverie,

"Kylo, wait."

His body stops completely, reacting fully to her command. His eyes look up at her, and there is no fear, no war, nothing on the other side of the rapidly deteriorating wall. There is just the two of them.

"I love you," the words fall out of her slowly, in one full breath.

"I know."

She turns around to face the door as it drips away. Despite herself, she smiles, something huge and bordering on goofy. This is the face the troopers are met with when the door finally falls.

She staggers her stance, raising her blades up almost elegantly to meet the soldiers.

It's the last thing Kylo sees before he makes himself into a ghost.

* * *

Synopsis: Rey meets Kylo through the bond while he and his Knights fight off Stormtroopers (and Death troopers). Hux has launched a rebellion and it's not looking great. After Rey realizes Kylo had been hit (not seriously), she goes ape and kills A LOT of people (through the bond, SURPRISE! It has grown). Then, they fight side by side, kill A LOT more people and retreat because there are too many troops.

Eventually, Rey finds a way for Kylo and his Knights to escape while she holds back the troops. They part after a kiss (and Kylo whispers some numbers into Rey's ear), and then, Rey tells Kylo she loves him before he escapes.

His response: I know.

(I am overly sentimental and not very creative)

Also: Thank you guys for being so patient. I am a teacher and we started school early this year and it has all been death and four hours of sleep a night since then. I really apologize. I didn't edit this chapter as thoroughly as I usually do, so if there are typos galore or unfinished bits, I promise to edit ASAP, but right now, I have to get ready for work! I just wanted to get SOMETHING out because it has been forever.


	20. Chapter 20

The first time Rey was caught alone in a sandstorm, she was eight.

Everything was already burning, every muscle in her little thighs, every scrap of negligently exposed skin. She could feel her eyeballs, actually feel them they were so dry, her pupils tired from pinpointing against the impossibly bright desert.

Something else deep inside her burned, like a foreign tumor sheathed in tissue to protect it from metastasizing. Something far more dangerous than the sun or the sand: hope.

Two hours behind her lay Plutt's junkyard. She had slipped out before he awoke, tired of hiding from his greedy leer every night under a new pile of scrap. It had become the first game she can remember playing, a game that made her stomach invert: hide and seek. Except there was no laughing and clapping when she was found, just a rough tug on her emaciated arm, or leg, or hair, whatever he could grab first.

She had spent years in his hovel, too young to understand.

But at eight, she had run. She understood, she had learned. She knew anything was better than him.

Anything.

When she saw the sandstorm on the horizon, she reconsidered that stance. Maybe being buried alive in a sandstorm was NOT better than Plutt, maybe she had been wrong.

But it was too late to have an argument with herself, because the sun had already blotted out and the desert had cooled a few degrees by the looming shade.

For the first time she can remember, her mind became a checklist of survival, pushing everything else out. It would do this almost constantly from that moment on.

The value she had in being small and undetectable, which had thus far only served to make her easily exploitable by Plutt, now become beneficial to her. She had been privy to the conversations of grifters, of wanderers and tramps who slid into Niima outpost, who scoured the desert before her. Their gruff conversations entered her mind, of how they survived the whirlwinds, or how they found others dead after the torrents.

Counterintuitively, she forced her alighted thighs to trudge up to the top of a dune, fighting the urge to hide behind one, having heard that was an easy mistake that would bury one alive. The little skin she had left uncovered she wrapped now in her linens, and dampened some fabric to cover her mouth. She hadn't scavenged her goggles yet, so she pressed her eyes into the crux of her arm at the elbow.

She crouched, making herself into a ball, waiting for it to hit.

And it did hit.

It felt like Jakku itself was clashing against her. Like all the elements had conspired in a personal vendetta against her tiny body. Sand lashed against her, the coverings seemingly useless against the winds. She could feel microscopic cuts from the small grains of sand that managed their way through the weavings of her linens. She tightened her muscles impossibly together, folding closer into herself, and waited. If she could keep this position, she may live. As the thought crossed her mind, there was an almost imperceptible jump in her center of gravity. Dread dragged her stomach down, turning her blood into lead.

The wind forced her crouched body to skitter against the surface of the sand, inching her further and further back, until it become a continuous drawl, indifferent to her form. She fought every instinct in herself to uncurl and dig her hands into the dune, to claw and fight to regain traction. She knew if she moved from her ball it would be certain death.

Her body remained resolutely huddled, not willing to budge to stop herself from drifting, gouging a channel in her wake. The dune around her started to raise up on her sides, and she knew then, she was being buried. As it dragged her, it was burrowing her into the sand. She was going to die anyways, whether or not she kept the position.

And then suddenly, she stopped. The storm raged on around her, but she had hit something that ended her drift.

Her mind went blank without explanations. She hadn't seen anything but sand for miles before the storm it. She was miles out from the Starship Graveyard, miles away from settlements. There was nothing that should have stopped her. But she was definitely stopped, she knew that much. She still felt the sand against her outer thighs and gathering in her lap, but she wasn't slipping any deeper into the dune.

She wanted desperately to look up, but she couldn't, the sand still ricocheting around her. She leaned a bit, into the mass flush against her side, to try to test it. It wasn't firm like steel, like an abandoned machine would be, it gave a little as she pressed into it, which only served to make her endlessly more curious.

Briefly, for the first time she could ever remember, she felt safe. Safe, in the middle of a hostile, threatening tempest. Safe, after knowing her death was eminent only moments before. Safe.

A warmth washed over her and then it was gone. The storm, the weight against her side, the warmth, it all disappeared in an instant.

Everything was still. The sun came back.

She raised her head, shaking loose the grainy particles. Her eyes were so encrusted she would cry nothing but sand for the next few weeks, but she knew she needed to open them to see what had stopped her. Once she parted her lashes, she looked up. There was nothing there. She was buried in sand to her waist and there was nothing there, nothing that should have stopped her from being dragged by the storm. Disappointment loomed in her, but she didn't know why, what she was disappointed about. She brushed off the feeling.

She moved her gaze down to start to dig herself out when she saw it next to her.

A flower. Blue. It's petals perfectly undisturbed by the raging torrents of the storm. Almost automatically, she found her little hands caressing its stem, before plucking it from the softened earth.

She never saw a flower like that one again on Jakku, and she had looked. She had catalogued all other flowers, Nightbloomers and Spinebarrels, she had surrounded herself with their small, resistant beauty, but never again did another pale blue flower come her way.

She never saw a flower like that one again until the Resistance visited Stewjon, a small farming planet, in their travels to rebuild. There, she had seen fields of them.

It was the first flower she put in her new home, when she found it later.

It is sitting in a jar in the _Hellhound Two_ on Jakku to this day, probably, shriveled and dry.

She thinks she will go back for it, eventually, if it hasn't been destroyed in a ransacking.

More likely still, though, is that she will never see it again.

* * *

This image of the sandstorm whirls around her as she is forced out of the connection, the bond weakening without proximity. The air around her is whipping rapidly and that same feeling of tiny cuts exposed to stinging air litters her skin again as she is pushed further and further out.

Her body crumbles unto itself when she reunites with her corporeal form, her muscles too tired to engage instinctively to keep her sitting upright. There is a low throb in her head as it connects to the steel floor below, shaking her brain in its casing. She stares up at the ceiling.

She takes a labored breath. Then another.

There is an emptiness, a morose emptiness that builds in her. It almost feels nostalgic. She realizes it is the way she felt before her force abilities had awoken. She can only feel the rise and fall of her own body, can only feel the tight sinew of her own muscles. She can't feel the spokes of energy radiating from the force towards every living thing around her anymore. She is alone.

She knows she should panic, she knows something isn't right, but she can't. There is no more energy left. The display of raw power spanning light years was too much. It was the most powerful she has ever felt, the most powerful she has ever been, and now, laying on the floor of this beat up freighter, she feels as powerless as she had against that storm.

Which is why it comes as no surprise when, for the second time in her life, she feels an almost imperceptible jump in her center of gravity.

This time, she is too exhausted to tense, or think about what comes next. This time, it feels like peace to allow herself to drift.

It takes a moment for her to recognize what pulls her. It's the force. The force is drawing her back into meditation, except it isn't meditation. It feels deeper than that, if it were possible.

The force is drawing her into itself. Trying to fold her into its fabric. An overwhelming feeling overcomes her at the realization that the force is calling her back.

But back where?

Her eyes are shut now, but she can't remember shutting them.

The dream she had as a child, of swimming out into a dark sea, washes over her and slowly ebbs behind her eyelids. But this time, she's not swimming. The undercurrent has caught her and is pulling her out. She feels it all around her, the slow pulse of the waves drawing her up and down, the lights fading in the distance. And there is nothing she can do but let it.

Then, there is blackness.

She moves, knowing exactly how this recurring fantasy should play out, knowing that under her touch should bloom bioluminescence, that under her touch should bloom the light to guide her back, but instead, she finds that her body is pinned. She can't move and everything slowly constricts. Her breathing becomes shallower, and all she can do is listen to her exhaling breaths as they grow weaker and weaker.

This is how it ends. There was nothing left in her to make light from, she had spent it all on the only thing that mattered. On him. For him.

Kylo. _Ben_.

At the thought of him, an unseen hand envelops hers in the water, and the waves around her illuminate more brightly than they ever had in her dreams.

Suddenly, everything flips, and she can once again feel the deep resonant power of everything around her. Her brain is a minute behind, but her body is already fighting against the tide. Fighting to get back to him.

Because she loves him.

She loves him and he's going to die, soon, if she can't get to him.

This isn't her time. She still has more she needs to do.

The edges of the blackness turn pale the harder she fights against the water, until it breaks.

Sputtering, she gasps into the air of the freighter, her torso shooting her into a sitting position and she bursts out of the current. She gulps at the air around her before coughing violently, salt water pouring from her lungs.

It takes her a few minutes to feel like Rey again, but she gets there.

She looks down her hands when she can think clearly again, looking for any clue as to who had reached out to her, who had taken her hand under the water, and finds none.

But something in her knows, has always known.

The weight, the shadow, the voice, the flower. The hand.

 _Get up._

 _These are your first steps._

 _He needs your help._

They all had a name now.

Obi Wan. A name for the entity that has been silently helping her whole life.

Now she thought she understood why.

It was all for Ben. It was all for Vader.

No, not Vader. Anakin.

Those lost boys in the world with no one to guide them.

It had been Obi Wan who ultimately raised Anakin, she had seen it deep in the caves of Mustafar. He had been so blinded by the ideals of the Jedi, by bending to the light always, that he had failed to notice his padawan turn. If he had noticed, he could have taught Anakin differently, he could have been what Anakin needed: a father. Anakin had come to him like a son, and all Obi Wan knew was how to quote truisms. Empty words. He could have stopped the whole bloody galaxy from burning, but he hadn't. By the time he realized his culpability in it all, the charred remains of Anakin had already been resurrected as Vader on Mustafar.

By the time he realized that Anakin had needed a family _and_ a teacher, it was too late. Padme was already dead, the twins already in new homes of his choosing.

And then, he realized what he had been given. There was a second chance. Luke. The sandy haired boy he watched from afar on Tatooine. The boy, and his sister, who had been worth the sacrifice on the _Death Star_ , because they had ultimately brought Anakin back for the briefest of moments.

And it had been enough, at the time. It had been enough.

Until Anakin's grandson.

Until the raging war of light and dark took their toll on another young Skywalker boy who needed a teacher, but needed a _family_ more.

Anakin had needed both.

Ben needed both.

But all they got was light sided sycophants, unable to balance tilted souls.

Obi Wan realized too late. Luke realized too late.

But then, as the force willed it, there was another.

The moment Rey was born into the world, Obi Wan had form again, after being dormant for so long. It was at that very moment, he knew that she was it. She would end the prophecy that Anakin started.

The moment she was born into the world, he had attached to her, feeling that one day, this little one would be the most important link in the galaxy. She would be strong, strong enough to continue what Luke had started, strong enough to hang onto what they all had lost along the way.

Balance.

Through Rey, he could atone for his sins against the grandfather by saving the grandson. To settle the imbalance of the Skywalker legacy, forever.

Forever.

Because she could be both. She would bring balance to the Skywalkers' tilted souls.

And so he watched her. Righted her wrongs. Whispered the right path. Or the wrong one, depending on what lesson she needed. Watched impotently as she endured hardship after hardship, abandonment and loss, knowing he couldn't step in, not completely, not in the way she needed. But he could muster enough force to push her when she really needed it, and so that is what he became.

A weight, a flower, a voice, a helping hand in the darkness, guiding her back to the light.

They were kindred souls, twin flames, unconnected by blood, but tied together by the force, which was trying to right its wrongs, too, by linking these two in purpose.

Purpose. She had a purpose. She knew what she needed to do. Obi Wan had laid the steps out in front of her. All she needed to do was take the first one.

* * *

When she musters the strength to stand, everything goes light for a moment, and she has to steady herself on a bunk. She anchors her touch and brushes alongside the entire bed until she is pushed up against the wall. Using her shoulder, she skims alongside it until she finds the door and pours her body against it, so that when it opens, she falls out.

And right into Jessika Pava.

"Rey! Kriff, are you alright?" Jessika's voice is strained as she tries to prop Rey up to keep her from falling face first into durasteel.

"I'm okay. I just...Poe, I need to get to Poe," Rey tries to find her footing but can't, forcing Jess to dip a little to readjust her grip. Jess comes up from under her arm and props Rey's body against her own.

"I think making him come to us is a better idea."

Rey swallows hard and nods, allowing herself to lean into Jessika's petite body. She looks over and sees Jess's hair matted to the sides of her face, her signature helmet hair, a sign of a her immense skill, as she turns them around, back into the bunks.

Jessika presses a small comm on her shoulder harness, "Blue Three to Black Leader, I need you in Black Squadron's bunk room."

Jess ushers Rey to her own bunk, and pushes her freshly laundered jumpsuits and breast bands out of the way to give Rey room to lay down.

"Sorry, I wasn't expecting company." Jess's voice is softer than Rey has ever heard it. It wasn't that Jess was a hard person by any stretch of the imagination, but she didn't suffer fools. She couldn't, in her line of work, "Are you sure you're okay? You look like hell."

Rey laughs at that, "Thanks, Pava." Jess smiles at the sarcasm, which is more her speed than sweet comfort. "I feel like it, too, but I promise, I'm fine."

Almost as quickly as Rey gets settled, she hears Poe approaching from the doorway, his voice preceding him.

"I knew you couldn't resist me forever Jess…" his usual flirtatious bravado makes Rey's lips twitch upwards a bit, because she can hear the hint of sincerity with it that he reserves exclusively for Jessika.

The voice stops abruptly when he crosses the threshold and lays eyes on Rey.

"Kriff, Rey, what happened?"

"Forgot about me already, Flyboy?" Jess's voice bites from across the room.

Rey lets out a quick laugh and Poe softens, seeing she's fine.

"I could never forget you Pava," he says with a wink, before kneeling down next to Rey, "Did you forget to turn off the catalytic converter again before disengaging the exhaust?"

Rey feels thick, not thinking this far into the future, for how she would explain it all to Poe. Her eyes go wide as she thinks and Poe notices.

"Hey, it's okay, I'm not judging," Poe playfully puts his hands up, as if surrendering to a fight that hadn't started yet.

"No, Poe, it's...it's Kylo."

He shoots his eyes to Jess, whose jaw had just dropped open so dramatically he thought he heard it.

"Kylo...Ren?" The question comes out of Jessika almost in a growl.

Rey ignores it, has to ignore it, to get this out, "He's...Hux launched a rebellion. They're hunting him on his own ship."

Now it's Poe's jaw's turn to drop, "How do you know?"

The bond.

The secret she had kept from everyone, even Leia, even Finn, for the past few years. The thing that felt too shameful and sacred and singular to share. The thing that felt like a sin to speak out loud, like disloyalty to divulge.

Now she had to tell Poe.

She measures her words.

"It's the force. It connects us sometimes."

Poe stands up quickly, as if she's burned him.

"What do you mean?" he takes a step back, and it hurts Rey more than the cuts etched into her skin.

"It's…" she wants to explain, wants to tell him, but can't find the words. She turns and meets Pava's disturbed expression before looking back to Poe, "We don't have a lot of time, I don't think. The First Order is torn, we need to act. Please, Poe, I know this is crazy, but I need you to trust me. We need to find him."

" _Find_ him?" Jessika's voice is incredulous, tearing through the air, but both of them are ignoring her now, staring at each other.

It takes a while for Poe to react, but when he does, he acts quickly.

"Do you think you can stand?" he takes a step towards her as he says it.

"I don't know. I think I just need some time."

"Okay, that's okay. I just need to think for a second."

"Jessika," her full name sounds weird from his lips, as he almost always refers to her by her callsign or nickname, "I need you to get Connix. Tell her to dig out a CIS Mobile Command Center and come here. Get Finn on your way and tell him to gather the commanders and bring them here, too."

"I'm on it," her sense of duty, to the Resistance and to Poe, override her utter confusion, and she turns quickly out the door.

Jess is out of the room, leaving Poe and Rey alone. It's laughable how often they found themselves at the center of some huge conflict lately, laughable how much she had come to depend on him for guidance and support. And here she was again, feeling his gaze on her like the disappointment of a brother. Poe began to pace the small room, his black boots dulling his steps against the durasteel.

"Since when?" Poe's rough voice breaks the tension, when the beat of his steps against the silence becomes too unbearable for him to handle.

"What?"

"When did it start, the-the bond?"

"Since before you and I met. Since Ahch-To."

Poe pauses briefly, before resuming his pacing. He is silent again, and she knows it is her turn to offer up something.

"We could see each other. Talk. But I learned to close it, after Crait. It wasn't an issue. I had it under control."

"Really? Until when? Until he almost killed you? Until you almost killed yourself? Because this," he gestures up and down her body, "This doesn't look like control Rey."

"Until Leia died," her response to him is almost immediate.

Poe stops pacing.

"The night she died, I felt him, and he was broken, Poe. I-I couldn't let him be alone then."

It was Kylo and hers oath, their vow. She couldn't speak it to Poe now, wouldn't break their silent covenant.

"And then it was different. It was stronger than before. I could see him, all of him. And now," she gestures to her cuts, the bruises already forming under her skin, "And now it's something else. I could fight alongside him through it. Hux is sending everything against him, every trooper on the ship is marching towards him. There are thousands of them. I have to help him. I can't let him die."

Poe shakes his head as he sits down next to her on the bunk, the weight of it all, the weight of who he knew Kylo Ren to truly be, descending on him. He runs his palms over his face and into his thick hair as he lets go a stuttering exhale.

Three years ago he would have yelled, he would have rallied and called her traitorous, thrown her off ship for her lack of loyalty. But now, he could see it, he could see her.

"Did I ever tell you I grew up next to a force tree?"

"A what?" the question comes out with more force than she intended, balking at the sudden change in Poe's demeanor.

"A force tree."

"Is that...a thing?"

Poe laughs, "I never thought I would have to explain this to a Jedi."

"I'm not a…"

"You are. Look at you. It is all you are: compassion, courage, wisdom," he pauses, "Balance. I used to play on that tree, swing from its branches and feel that balance. I feel the same thing now, from you. You must know by now what you are."

Rey swallows and meets his stare. She opens her mouth, but before anything can come out, Connix walks in, all business carrying the mobile command unit, its huge size and obvious weight doing nothing to upset her perfect posture, "Odd place for a meeting, General" she nods as she sets the machinery down on the opposite bunk.

Her shoulders slump as soon as she turns to see Rey.

"I'm afraid I'm to blame for that," Rey replies to her concern, as she swings her legs off Jessika's bunk, angling to avoid knocking Poe off.

"Are you okay?" Connix's buns shake as she asks.

"Feeling better, there's no need to worry," Rey waves it off and shifts awkwardly into a sitting position, ducking her head out to avoid the bunk above.

"Should I get Kalonia?" Connix points to the door, taking a step, then another towards it.

Both Poe and Connix wait for a response, which Rey supplies quickly, "No, no, there's no need. I suspect it looks worse than it actually is." Rey had actively been avoiding Kalonia since her revealing return from Mustafar. She had never gone to see her again, after Kalonia had asked her to, and she couldn't face any of that right now.

Before anyone can say anything further, a group of officers file in, crowding the room.

As the rest of the officers in the fleet trickle in, Rey explains more that yes, she is alright, and no, she doesn't need anything.

Finn is the last to march in, the room now almost filled to the brim with people, but he still gravitates to Rey almost instantly, always being able to find her first in a crowded room.

"Rey…" his voice is stern as he dips into Pava's mattress next to her, into the spot everyone saved, knowing it was Finn's.

"I will explain everything, I promise, I'm okay…" she provides a weak smile and grabs Finn's hand on his thigh. He squeezes once, before Poe's rich General's voice fills the room.

"Thank you all for coming. I called you in here today because I have information that suggests The First Order has devolved into a state of Civil War."

The room devolves into gasps and titters, before Poe's palm deftly rises above the crowd to quiet them.

"So, let's talk."

* * *

That night, unable to sleep, Rey sits up against the dejarik table, one foot perched in front of her on the bench, deep in thought. Her lower lip is raw from her having chewed on it all day, and she is covered in bacta, more to make Finn feel better than anything else.

She had explained it all, to the three of them, when the meeting had ended. The bond, how it had started, how she had managed it. And they had listened. They didn't call her a traitor. They didn't abandon her at the first outpost. They listened, Rose holding tightly onto her hand as Finn applied bacta and Poe paced slowly. She braced for yelling, for fighting, for tears, but all she got was a family who wished she would have told them sooner, so they could have helped soothe her troubled soul.

She was so dumb. She was so lucky.

But she can't sleep, so she mindlessly thumbs at the hem of her ripped linens in common room after they all have gone to sleep. She is so lost in her mind that she doesn't notice when Poe comes in and sits in the chair opposite her.

They sit on either side of the game board. It takes her a while, past her initial shock of seeing him here, to turn to him and plant her feet back on the Falcon's floor.

They sit in silence for a long time. He slumps slightly in the chair, but still holds himself like a General. Rey knows that is who sits across from her now. The General of the Resistance Fleet, not Poe, who had kissed her forehead after she had told them the truth earlier that day.

It is the General who breaks the silence, "Something happened on Mustafar, didn't it? Between you and Ren."

Rey doesn't answer, instead she looks down at her own body, her own hands, remembering how much it had given away to his enemy. Her enemy.

"You love him," she hears Poe in it, not just the General, and her head comes up. A tear runs down her face. Involuntarily, she gives the slightest of nods.

Poe closes his eyes. He leans forward in the chair and puts his face in his hands. Rey has never known the disappointment of a parent, she has only ever known what it feels like to be disappointed by a parent. But this must be it. She wipes her tears, running her fingers against the waterline of her eyes, trying to stop more from coming.

"He's a war criminal Rey," he's not looking at her, can't look at her, "The entire Hosnian system is gone. Millions, billions of lives," he stops. He flicks his head up, "And Han."

Rey knows there is nothing she can say. There is nothing that could come from her mouth that wouldn't sound like a child pleading her feelings against the monstrosity of reality that Poe is dealing her.

"This isn't going to end well. I can't protect you from what will happen. I have a Galaxy of hurt souls wanting justice on his back, and I can't stop that because-because someone I care about loves him."

Rey breaks their gaze, looking down at the empty board which separates them.

Poe continues, "You were right. The First Order is tearing itself apart. Once we found the right place to look, we got all the intel we needed. I'm going to issue the order to jump for a full strike tomorrow morning."

Rey looks deeply at him, her face lengthening in awe, tears gathering and blurring her vision once again.

"I made a mistake once, a big mistake, trying to do the heroic thing. I won't make that mistake again. I can't sit here and expound to you virtue or honor anymore, Rey. This war has taken too much. I don't know if that truly matters anymore. What I do know is this: I trust you. I trust that whatever you do, it will be the right thing." He pauses, as if what comes next will pain him in some way, but he says it anyway, "If you think there is still something in him, when we get to their fleet-find him. Then, it's up to you."

Rey's eyes widen, allowing her welled tears to fall out.

"What's up to me?"

"What happens to Kylo Ren."

"What do you mean?"

"Tomorrow night, the log, if there still is a log after all of it, can say one of two things: Kylo Ren was captured by Rey of Jakku and brought to the Resistance for execution."

Rey's head cocks to the side.

"Or, it could say the _Millenium Falcon_ , captained by Rey of Jakku, was destroyed, killing all on board, including the prisoner Kylo Ren. And that's what history will record. No one will come looking for the _Falcon_ , no one will bat an eye. And you can run, far away from this, and find something like peace, for once."

With that Poe reaches across the table, wiping a falling tear from Rey's face and giving her a last, sad smile, before breaking away and standing up.

"I'll see you tomorrow, kid. 0400."

Rey can't say anything back. She can't do anything but sit stupidly against the dejarik table as she watches Poe disappear back into his quarters, her mouth wide in shock, her heart seized with every emotion, because she has already made her decision.

* * *

 **Side note: when I started this, I had no idea that Rey and Poe would have so many scenes together (I wanted it more Finn and Rey, honestly), but I really like seeing his evolution through her and how they respond to one another with their version of familial love. I like that he is more of a big brother/dad to her than Finn can be, because of their age and power difference, so I hope it isn't too much for you all!**

 **Thank you all for your patience and being so incredible. It is really hard to work on this sometimes, because life can get crazy, but so worth it to get to see your response and feel like I am a part of a bigger community.**


	21. Chapter 21

Sometimes, when Rey closed her eyes, she could still see her hesitation wounds, scarred into the womb of the war machine she was formed in. The scavengers and the thieves would have no doubt raided her AT-AT by now, cleansing it of all evidence of the life she had once lived, so that she might pretend that life had never happened to her. But those marks would stay forever etched there, a permanent reminder of the daily claw marks she dug into her own soul waiting for a family that would never come.

Those hesitation marks would be the only trace of her still left on Jakku. It had been so long since she had seen them, had run her hands across them, had stared at them when sleep became elusive, but now, behind her tightly shut eyelids, they taunted her, Poe's words still ringing in her ears.

Leave. With him. Without them. Forever.

There was no hesitation in her life now. There was no waiting. Not if she wanted to survive. Not if she wanted everyone she loved to survive. This life was marked by decisiveness and instinct. It had been since she ran onto the _Falcon_ for the first time, Finn's hand in hers. It was all she had on Starkiller base, and on Mustafar, and now, sitting in front of the dejarik table in the steel belly of her first true home.

She had been given a choice, a real choice, only once before in her fated life: Kylo's outstretched palm in the throne room. The rest of it seemed pre-determined, like all roads lead her here. That choice, and the choice she makes now, are the only two that would come to define her life.

So when two lives diverge in front of her now, there is no hesitating.

Two lives.

One life where The Resistance would rebuild, and she would take her place amongst them.

A life of purpose, and of principle. A life where she would see her best friends walk hand in hand to be tied in matrimony, bustling Rose's dress as she walked down the aisle. At the same moment their rings would be exchanged, Kylo would be sitting alone in a cold prison cell, Rey's skin prickled in his goosebumps.

That life would be one where Poe might finally let her fly his X-Wing, and she would get to see the kind of man he was destined to become, the kind of leader she knew he would be. She would see him write the history of the Galaxy, the first chapter of which would be signing the order to kill Kylo Ren. Rey would be in the room with him when he did. She would watch Poe sign Kylo's life away, and have to swallow the bile down as the diplomats smiled and shook hands, proud of their decision to let the war take a final life.

It would be a life where she would feel Kylo grow colder in her lap after the single blaster shot entered his skull, and would be torn away by Finn after hours of holding his lifeless body, screaming and kicking and cursing the bloodthirsty galaxy.

A life where she would wake up every morning and touch BB's antenna would also be a life where should would wake up knowing Ben no longer existed. A life where she might meet Chewie's wife and children, and grieve with Chewie over the loss of the entirety of his other family, the entirety of the Skywalker/Solo clan. A life where she would listen to R2 and Threepio bicker as she met them for monthly cleanings. A life where when R2 would sigh heavily and only Rey would know the true weight of it, because she sighed in the same way.

A life where Ben Solo, where Kylo Ren, would become only a footnote in history. But a life where his absence would become her everything.

Because she could have had him, and she didn't.

They could have built a house next to a river, her and him. Maybe a sea. Somewhere where it rained, definitely. And they would light fires and fall asleep with intertwined limbs and their breath on each other's faces. They would stand in the rain and train for nothing, but feel the thrum of the life they left behind beneath their grasps and be better for it.

She would have two gardens, in the wet soil, a flower garden and a vegetable garden. She would have flowers she could make grow, instead of watch wither and die in glass urns. There would be life there, life that she could make and cultivate and watch flourish.

Some days they wouldn't say words to one another. She would hand him the washing to dry, and he would put a blanket over her feet as they read by the fire. And it would be enough. It would be more than enough, it would be home.

And somewhere, lightyears away, Finn would be doing the same for Rose. Poe and BB-8 would be running a new Galaxy.

And everyone she loved would be safe. Even if she never saw them again, she knew they would be safe, that everyone would be safe and loved and grow.

Her hands tremble as her blood pumps violently throughout her body. She sits for minutes, hours maybe, staring at them shake in her lap as she plays the paths out in her head. Finally, she stands uneasily, and presses them against the cool durasteel belly of the Falcon in a bid to calm her tremors.

When that doesn't help, Rey leans her head against the side of the Falcon, imagining the streaks of pure light which traverse the outer hull.

Part of her didn't believe any of this. Part of her couldn't believe any of this. She should be on Jakku. She should be living a small, meaningless life. She should be growing old and wrinkled under the sun.

Instead she is here.

 _You must know what you are by now._

Jakku feels like it happened to someone else. Intellectually, she knows that's not true. Physically, too, the scars and freckles all over her body, that Kylo had made her so hyper aware of, serve as proof that she had been there, had felt the sting of that sun, had grown despite the odds against her.

But she isn't that girl on Jakku anymore, is she?

Is she?

She starts to walk forward, uneasily. Her hands run across the durasteel, catching every once in a while on a rivet shaken loose by how hard the aging machine has been pushed in recent years.

When she breaks the haze of her thoughts, she finds that her legs have brought her to the cockpit, as they so often do. When she tries to take in her surroundings, finally turning her eyes back on, she finds her vision has gone blurry and she feels weak.

Chewie looks back at her, and instantly draws her into a roaring hug.

He heard. She knows he heard, because she's sat in this cockpit when it's quiet, when there is nothing but the whir of the engines softly gliding through the dead of space, and tried not to listen to the conversations in the main room. Tried not to hear the whispers between Rose and Finn that they kept only to themselves, tried not to hear Poe's heavy sighs. Tried not to, but always did.

And she knew Chewie was trying not to hear, but he had.

She buries herself into his fur, and allows all the shaky tension to drain.

She doesn't recognize the warm envelopment of sleep until she brought out of it by the soft blinking of a red light. All her limbs stretch out as the light tickles across her face, and she tries to shift further into Chewie, but meets the worn leather of the empty pilot's seat instead. The cold chair jolts her up, as her mind snaps out of slumber. The cockpit is almost completely black, and that, coupled with the fact they were currently sans pilot, are tell tale signs that the _Falcon_ had been docked sometime in her sleep. The fog of sleep falls, turning the sharpness up on the only light source available, the blinking red light. Rey opens and closes her mouth once, then twice, trying to figure it out. There were so many things it could be trying to tell her. Were the gravity emulators acting up again? The Devo-Pek acceleration compensators? The ion flux stabilizers? Hell, was it the garbage disposal again?

Her eyes go wide as the truth flits in her brain and she stands straight up, hitting her head on the controls above. Without even stopping to gasp, she is running out of the freighter, already desperately behind in heeding its warning: ready for battle positions.

* * *

Finn.

Where is Finn?

Everything is movement. All the Resistance members are alight in chaos, rushing here and there to prepare. She wades through them, as they climb under and up into the ships all around her. Droids skitter around, some rounding corners so fast they tip up onto two wheels, but they always pause in their trajectory, slightly, to acknowledge Rey, leftover vestiges of appreciation for their time in her care. Her holopad almost wedges out of her hands a few times in the clutter of the crowd, but she grips it steady, her procrastination at readying the _Falcon_ for the jump written all over the screen. But she needs to find Finn, more than anything, she can't leave without finding him first.

It feels like a tempest, the bodies moving against her, and she's trying to find her calm in the storm.

Finally, it parts, and she sees all three of them standing under Poe's X-Wing in the distance.

She feels her face brighten when she sees Finn's eyes on her already, smiling broadly at her, seeking her out in the chaos.

And then she remembers, and there is a stab in her heart.

She stops dead in her tracks and Finn's smile turns into a head cocked in confusion.

Feet laden with lead, she wills herself to swallow it down and move forward. She forces the smile back to her lips, a smile that fools Poe and Rose, but it wouldn't, couldn't fool Finn.

As she steps into their ranks, they make room for her, Rose bending in to hit her with a shoulder.

"Can you believe this is actually happening?" Rose pseudo-yells over the buzz of the soldiers all around them.

"I really can't," Rey tries not to look at Poe when she says it, but her eyes betray her, and she looks over to see him trying hard not to look at her either.

"The next time we see each other, it will all be over," Finn's eternal optimism cuts through, but his face is still focused on Rey's and she knows he is trying to suss her out.

Rey smiles, trying desperately to waylay his suspicion, and out of the corner of her eye sees Rose paste on the same grin, both of the women used to his hope, but hyper aware of the realities of war.

"You missed Poe in full-on General mode," Finn continues, slapping Dameron on the shoulder, "He roused us all with one of his great speeches."

"Oh, I missed all that?" Rey broadens her smile and swivels her head from Finn to Poe.

Rose turns back to fasten a control panel back on, "We didn't want to wake you, not after…" her voice trails off, knowing she had ventured into unsure territory, "You didn't miss much. Just the usual 'a new hope, we're better together, sunrise imagery' type of stuff," Rose's arms wave with the mock majesty of it all, her screwdriver becoming like an imaginary baton in her hands.

"Thanks, Rose," Poe retorts, his face wrought up into an incredulous smirk.

"Anytime, boss," she returns his smirk measure for measure, "Anyway, it's pretty much the same formations as always. Poe's leading Black Squadron, Finn's gunning the _Brigandine_ while I find fires to put out _._ You got the _Falcon_ , of course."

"It's the same as always," Poe interjects, taking over from Rose as she deals with a popped spring, "except we're going to jump with small ships, first. Blue Team, Black Squadron, the _Brigandine_ , and the _Falcon._ All others stay behind until we have eyes on the situation."

Rey nods, knowing the ships listed are small enough that they can jump away again quickly and with a smaller risk of detection. It's a sound strategy, to send scouts first and not risk the fleet, especially because their intel is so new.

"Once we figure it out, we'll call the rest in," Poe continues, draping his arm over Finn's shoulders, in what they all recognize as some sort of false bravado, as if this was just another day on the job.

"And then?" Rey poses.

"And then, we do what we've always done," Poe shrugs.

"What we've always done," Rey nods curtly, engaging in the shorthand they can use now, after all this time together. She can fill in the blanks from there: the Squadrons will flank the ships, acting as a smokescreen for the _Falcon_ so it can slide in unseen to the _Discord._ Rey will do what she always does, distract the Force User while the rest of them exploit the diverted attention to win the battle. Except this time, it's not just a battle, it's the whole war. It's manipulative, sure, but effective. There has never been a time Kylo didn't come straight for her in their battles, not since Starkiller.

It was no different this time.

Or, outwardly, it would appear no different. There would be no balking by the Resistance members, no suspicions chipping away at their subterfuge, because that was the way it always was. It was always known, or assumed, at the very least, that Rey and Kylo would tear eachother apart. They were fated to be mortal enemies, fated to their last stand together. No one would bat an eye at them being together in what would appear to be their last moments. No one would suspect a thing as Rey became a martyr for their cause.

With that, another alarm blares, signaling that it is time for the X-Wings to launch. Poe smiles.

"Well, that's me. See you on the other side," he kisses Rose's cheek, who blushes a bit at the contact, and hugs Finn.

Before Poe can turn to Rey, her vision blurs. She hadn't felt this, she hadn't know that she was on the verge of tears before it was too late.

"Wait, just, wait," she throws her hands up at her friends, as if calming an animal set to flee, and quickly turns around to C'ai Threnalli, Poe's wingman, who is arguing with his droid as he boards his X-Wing next to Poe's. Rey swallows hard, blinking back the tears, as she hands him her holopad and whispers into his ear, making the gruff Threnalli roughly nod his head as she clicks onto the screen.

"Yeah, I got it, I got it," he waves her off in his usual gravelly way.

"Thanks C'ai," Rey gently squeezes his shoulder as she says it.

"Don't mention it, Little Jedi," he replies, his voice softening at her touch, "Alright, you all get together now."

"Rey?" Finn's voice is inquisitive, and looking back at her friends, he certainly speaks for all of them, as their faces are all contorted in various stages of confusion.

"A picture," Rey's voice is even now, "We need a picture. You know, for posterity."

"Old school," Rose says as she wipes some grease across her forehead, "I like it."

Poe smiles as he rearranges his friends to his liking, "We have to get my good side."

Rey rolls her eyes at Poe as he pulls her between Finn and himself, then uses his hand to draw Rose in.

"All my sides are my best side, so, no worries here," Finn replies, clearly poking at Poe, who takes his arm off Rose and proceeds to mess up Finn's hair with it.

"Hey!" Finn swerves out of Poe's touch, but his smile never falters.

Rey and Rose laugh, and Rey turns her head from side to side to look at them all. All her friends are naturals, of course, their faces widening into beautiful smiles. It's then, looking at all their smiling faces, she notices something is missing.

"Wait, BB! Get down here," Rey yells backwards towards the fighter.

The droid beeps in the glee of being recognized and quickly stops working on initializing the X-Wing's systems and drops out of his position, rolling over in front, causing Threnalli to have to backup a little to get him in the frame.

"Alright, I'm only doing this once, so look pretty," Threnalli grumbles, "One…two…."

On three, two giant paws flank the group and Chewie roars above them, dragging them closer together and changing all of their smiles into laughter.

Threnalli hands the holopad back to Rey, "It's a good one. Good luck, Jedi."

"Thank you. May the force be with you, C'ai."

"And with you." With that, Threnalli instantly resumes his argument with the droid, now perched resolutely atop his fighter.

Chewie ruffles Rose's hair and strides away as quickly as he came, roaring something about seeing Rey back on the _Falcon._

Rey keeps her eyes down at her holopad for as long as she can, reveling in a moment she is still living, until she finally sees a tear fall onto the screen. She tries to hide it as she stares at Chewie's large face smiling above their four smaller ones, with BB posed in the foreground, but Poe sees it, and instantly drags her into a lumbering hug as soon as it lands.

"None of that, none of that," he whispers into her ear, "Everything is going to work out, you'll see."

He pulls her tight and she buries herself into his shoulder, and forgets that she never had a father to hold her when she was crying, because she had Poe. She had Poe and Finn and Rose for three years, and that would be enough to last a lifetime.

Poe grasps her shoulders and pulls her away. He lowers his head only slightly, so his eyes are completely level with hers, and she sees the tears she left visibly behind, darkening Poe's orange flight suit, "We love you, kid."

His words jolt her, and she can't be there anymore, she can't take the pain ripping out from some hole deep within her that they had filled with their love. She backs up, as if he has slapped her.

"I...I love you, too...I have to go. Goodbye," she keeps her head down as she walks away quickly from the group, leaving all of them behind in a stupor. Everything in her head starts screaming, that she has to turn back, that she has to tell Finn, that she can't leave him never knowing why she left, why she never came back, but her feet keep propelling her forward. Finn, her brother, both orphaned by cruelty, brought together by fate, she was just going to leave him without a word, without an explanation. She tries to stop but she can't, dodging through the crowded hangar, as everything blurs, until there is a harsh tug on her sleeve and she whirls around.

"Rey, what's wrong?" It's Finn, because, of course it is. He's looking at her with the stern look of determination and love that only he has.

"You know you're my best friend, right?" the words escape her too quickly.

Finn pauses, really pauses, in a way that Finn doesn't do, his eyes searching hers for something.

"Rey, we're going to win this, you don't have to talk like that."

"I just need to know that you know that. I need to know that you know how much you mean to me."

"Rey?" Finn's voice is wobbly now, full of something uncertain and Rey hates herself for making him feel that.

"Just tell me you know that," Rey's eyes are welled full and she wills herself not to blink, not to scare him more.

"I know, Rey, I know," he takes her into his arms and she buries her face into his shoulder, "We've been through so much. And now there's just one more thing, one more big thing, that we have to get through, and we will. We will get through it, together, just like we've gotten through everything else since we found each other."

"I'm not coming back," her words muffle into his chest.

"What?" he pulls her back, hands grasped firmly on her upper arms.

"I'm not coming back...I'm…I'm not," she can't look at him, instead, focusing on the floodlights above them, growing into rising and falling starbursts as her tears flow.

Finn shakes his head, his eyes lowering in caution.

"Rey, it's just another battle. Why are you talking like this?" His moves his thumb to wipe her tears, trying to understand this reaction. Rey didn't cry. Not usually, not unless something was really wrong. A lifetime without water had taught her never to waste.

"No, I-I'm leaving, after."

"What do you mean, leaving?" Finn's eyebrows knit in consternation.

The alarms start to blare, indicating that all battle stations must be ready to jump within five minutes.

"I'm sorry, I love you, I have to go," she says, twisting out of his grip, shaking loose some tears as she does.

"Rey, no wait," there's a sad desperate twang to his voice that Rey can't take.

She rises up and kisses him softly on the cheek, "Take care of her, take care of _them_."

And with that, her back is to him and she is running too quickly for Finn to grasp as she retreats from him.

"Rey! REY!"

As she boards the _Falcon_ , all she can hear ringing in her ears is Finn's voice, screaming her name after her. It lasts until she is far away from the dock, deep into space, and while she knows it is just her mind reverberating her own pain back to her, part of her is unsure that it isn't still Finn, continuing to scream for her back at the bay.

* * *

"Systems are go."

The coordinates are set to the Scarl system, the last place the First Order ships were detected, hours ago, before interference scrambled their signals.

Rey slaps the controls a few times to light up the hyperdrive console, a little harder than she usually does. She can feel her tears drying uncomfortably tight on her cheeks and part of her is mad at herself, but mostly, there is a dark sadness that is somehow calming to her now, in this, their most desperate hour.

Finally, the lights signaling that the hyperdrive is charged and ready blink on.

"Ready to jump."

Chewie's paw finds her shoulder and knocks her out of her self-pity. He follows the touch with a quick, chastising warble.

"I _am_ breathing," she replies, and then starts breathing again.

Poe's voice fills the _Falcon_ 's cockpit from over the comms, "Proceed with the countdown. All groups assume attack coordinates."

Then, it is Kaydel, tucked safely within the fleet, who counts, "Black Squadron, Blue Team, the _Brigandine_ and the _Millenium Falcon_ , prepare to jump into hyperspace on my mark. Ten, nine…"

The Universe goes quiet as the engines of the ships all around them quiet, preparing their hyperdrive motivators. They are moving quickly now, slicing through space to prepare for the jump, because the _Falcon_ 's days of entering into hyperspace from a cold standstill are far behind her.

"Eight, seven…"

She knows once they jump that's it, and part of her wants those hesitation marks again. Wants to claw her own soul to stay behind, for just one more day. She was being torn two directions and she never expected it to hurt this badly.

"Six, five…"

It was all happening so quickly. But she can't, would never leave him alone, not now, not ever.

"Four, three…"

On the other side of this jump was the man she loved. And she would ruin the Universe to get back to him.

"Two, one."

Rey's "punch it, Chewie" is met with his excited thundering as their bodies lurch backwards with the waning universe.

The ship screeches under the pressure, and Rey fights the urge to press her hands against the side of the cockpit to keep it from falling apart. Something feels off, she looks at Chewie who looks back at her, and she knows he feels it too.

The ship lurches forward, which sends their bodies with it, caught only by the belts crisscrossing their chests. Alarms from every quadrant of the ship blare immediately. Rey engages her abs to press her body back into her seat, and it is then, she sees it, and her whole body starts running the permutations of survival again.

The segmented window is blocked completely by grey, there are no stars, not even the black of space, just grey. Her brain only has time to scream one thing at her: Star Destroyer.

Without thinking, she pulls up on the control yoke, and her hand shoots to the speed brake handle, which is already covered in a furry paw, Chewie being a half second quicker than her on the draw.

Neither of them could open their mouths to scream, there wasn't enough time, they needed to get past this ship. The _Falcon_ groaned and rattled and scared Rey, for the first time, its systems all blaring, soaking her veins in adrenaline.

They had never jumped straight into something like this, there should have been warning, there should have been failsafes against jumping straight into another ship, especially a fucking Star Destroyer.

"Engage the starboard thrusters!" Rey's voice is resolute against the groans of the Falcon. Everything starts shaking, rattling out of place. It feels as if her eyeballs themselves are vibrating violently in her skull and she wants nothing more than to shut her eyes to get them to stop, but she can't, she can't take her eyes off the windows in front of her.

Suddenly, the console in front of them flickers, then goes black.

"No no no no no, just one more time girl, just one more time," she tries soothing the beast, while Chewie is banging on what seems like every button in front of him, the two of them employing different strategies to will the _Falcon_ to hang on just a little longer.

All the noise drains as the main power shuts off and the _Falcon_ freezes in the dead space. Both Chewie and Rey stare wide eyed at one another before the ship slowly starts descending back down, parallel to the hull of the ship in front of them.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Rey's curses blend with Chewie's uproarious screams as they feel themselves drifting. They are all movement, with the Wookie somehow finding himself on her side of the cockpit furiously pressing every button with no seeming pattern and Rey, on Chewie's side, punching out a control panel to fumble with frayed wires on the inside.

The lights flicker on. They can't tell what worked, but they don't really care, as they trade seats wordlessly, and buckle back in.

Chewie roars something, his paws above him dialing into the buttons on the roof of the cockpit.

"Got it," Rey affirms, as she taps on the rear thrusters bit by bit, edging them up and over the titanic structure floating by their underbelly.

But something is still off, Rey can still feel, or not feel, something. She is too bathed in adrenaline to interface with the force now, but they should be dodging fire. Even on the underbelly of a Destroyer, they should be fending off turrets. Why weren't they under some sort of bombardment?

When they crest over the ship, Rey ready to run to the gunner chair, they see why.

She grabs the controls and reels them back, turning the Falcon on its side to avoid the debris.

It's everywhere.

The bodies of soldiers, of Stormtroopers and of black clad Imperialists dot the landscape. Parts of ships, and bodies, hang suspended in the air and they, the Resistance, come to be suspended with them, temporarily stunned at the destruction wrought all around them.

She has eyes on the Squadrons and the _Brigandine,_ as she sways slowly through the refuse. Both look a little worse for the wear, but didn't appear as if they jumped directly into an idle Star Destroyer, so at least that was something.

The comms are silent as they drift more, turning slightly to avoid the large scale devastation. It's everywhere, there isn't a part of their field of vision that isn't littered with pieces of ships. The _Falcon_ whines as parts scratch against its outer hull, the only sound in the eerie silence of this dead place.

This isn't a battle, it is a graveyard.

They trudge slowly forward, until, through all the detritus, they see it, dawning over them, blue and purple glows of flame tearing through the ship.

The _Discord_ wanes, blocking out all light from neighboring stars. It is massive. It had been years since Rey had seen a dreadnought, but this seems bigger than any she had ever encountered. It's more massive than any Star Destroyer she had ever picked through, but as she looks at the flagging ship in front of her, the images of the Imperial Graveyard on Jakku flash through her mind.

Death is all around her, and no one is coming for them. There is no evasive maneuvering to deflect fire, only to skirt around the debris of the dead. Pieces of ships threaten to crash into them, but it is almost like a slow motion snow globe, an oddity she had seen once weaving undetected through the markets of Coruscant. Everything languishes, until finally, Poe's voice breaks through the comms.

"Kriff, what did they do?"

"They tore each other apart."

Finn's reply reverberates through her bones. Rey could almost see the havoc of the last twelve hours. The turrets turning again turrets. Trooper against trooper. The First Order gnawing at its own flesh.

Chaos reigning.

 _Death._

Shit.

Rey reaches out through the force, immediately, as the tumult passes. She can feel Kylo, like a beacon in the stillness. His signature is different, somehow, more measured than she has ever felt it. _Humbled_ , she realizes. His gait is faltering, stammering through the slowly disintegrating ship. There are no other force signatures besides his. He is alone, his Knights have all fallen protecting their King, and he is alone now on the Dejarik table. Internally, she fights to keep down the panic, balancing her breathing out. It would be no use to give in to her terror for him now, she needs to remain balanced, for him, for them.

They continue to slowly sway through the ruins, the silence deafening. There is life, she can feel it, but it's flickering, at best. Unable to lift its head for the final fight.

It was over.

Poe's voice echoes through the comms the second she thinks it, as if he sensed the finality of it, too, "Black One to Blue Three, the aims of this mission have changed. Be advised, this is now a rescue mission. We need to get on that ship, see if we can find survivors."

The silence returns, and Rey could almost feel the collection of the Resistance here, the strongest and oldest members, holding their breaths at Poe's words.

Finally, it is Jessika who breaks the silence.

"General, permission to speak freely sir."

"Out with it Pava."

"Don't you think we should leave well enough alone? Let them all die, let them burn for what they did?"

"Not all of them."

"Why risk it?"

"Because it's the right thing to do."

Finn smiles as the words he spoke so many years ago to Poe reach him through the comms.

"Let's do this then," Jessika's voice is determined, and Rey can tell that Poe had struck a chord with his hope.

"Bring up the _Solace_ , we'll need medical, tell all other ships to stay at the jump site," Poe orders.

"Blue Squad, on me, let's clear some area for Kalonia in all this..."

Jessika's words are broken by another, more monotonous, voice, blasting through the comms, "Warning. Proximity Alert. Protocol 149, in accordance with First Order code 702, is in effect. Please identify your crafts."

"Poe, are you hearing this?" Finn interjects between warnings.

"Warning. Proximity Alert..."

"Affirmative, any idea what it is?"

"Uhh...it sounds like an automated loss prevention system," Snap Wexley's voice, knowledgeable after years spent as a businessman in the outer rim, resounds as the expert on the matter, "They usually only equip cargo ships with the technology, in case the crew dies in deep space, the cargo is safe from pirates. I've never seen a battleship have it, much less a dreadnought."

"Warning. Proximity Alert. Identify your ships. Further encroachment will be treated as a hostile act under First Order Code 008."

"Alright then. I don't really think they will roll out the welcome wagon if we give them our Resistance callsigns. Let's pump the breaks." Poe's words act as an order, and all of their tiny, rebellious offshoot stop, still swaying every once in a while to dodge an errant piece of metal. "Any ideas on how to proceed Wexley?"

"With extreme caution? Usually these systems are designed to target remaining power directly on the intruding craft, a sort of last ditch effort to protect the payload."

"How much power could it possibly have left?" Poe sounds perplexed, "It's basically self-immolating. Rose, what are your readings?"

"Oxygen is at 85% and holding steady, though anymore breeches to the hull and that will rapidly deteriorate. I can't get an accurate hold on weapons, though they are leaking massive radiation on their backside, so it can't be great. I'm not sure how much they could throw at us, but anything from a ship like that would be enough."

"Warning. Proximity Alert. Identify your ships. Be under advisement..."

Rey blocks out the sound, knowing this is her only impediment to Kylo, and the only true threat to her friends on this stagnant battlefield.

"Wait, Poe, I think I got this."

"Rey?" It's the first time she has spoken aloud over the comms since the jump, and Poe is startled by her sudden re-emergence.

She enters the numbers she has been replaying in her head like a prayer since Kylo first whispered them to her on the very ship that lay in front of her now.

"Ships recognized. Cargo secure. Please advance."

"How?"

"Some secrets I just have to keep, General."

"Fair enough."

Before she can listen to anything else, Rey sees an opportunity, finding a gap in the floating dreck of what was left of the First Order. She pushes the thrusters, resolved to bring the _Falcon_ to its first son.

"I guess Rey has volunteered to be our vanguard," Poe says, with the underpinnings of a smile, "Black Squadron, _Brigandine_ , tail the _Falcon_ to the bay. Rey, you know what to do. Blue Team, bring up the _Solace_ and prepare for transports."

They move forward in relative silence, pushing through. The closer they get to the _Discord_ , the more visceral the suffering around them becomes, with the bodies growing thicker, frozen with their limbs askew, as if reaching out for a savior that would never come. The stygian scene creeps over everyone, and settles in the collective pit of their stomachs.

"How is this possible? Thousands of people, they're just gone? It's not real, it can't be real," a pilot, probably Karé, breaks through.

"It seems pretty real," Rose's voice shakes.

They break the entrance of the _Discord_ , the Black Squadron pulling up. No fire has befallen them. The dreadnought's mechanical atmosphere has not yet failed. The overwhelming surrealness of the situation acts as a blanket to the deluge of despair that surrounds them.

"Permission to land, General," it comes out as more of a command than a question, as Rey has already engaged the landing sequence and routed to a bay left hanging partially unhinged from the main ship.

"Wait," it is Finn's voice, not Poe's, that replies. He has somehow dialed in to a private transmission, no doubt with some help from Rose.

"Finn, I'm sorry…" She has to go, she has to find Kylo.

"Rey, NO, tell me what's going on," something in his voice, in the way it seems to shake, catches her. She can't leave him without an explanation, she can't.

The last three years she has spent running, but not from Finn, never from Finn. Finn, who knew the sting of abandonment just as fiercely as she did. Finn, who became her first true family member, someone who wouldn't leave, someone who had stuck by her from the very instant they met. Finn. How can she explain this to Finn?

"I love him Finn. I love him and he is going to die and I can't let him die."

The words hit him all at once. Rey, his Rey. He wants to open his mouth to object, to tell her there is another way, but there's not, is there? Kylo Ren may be redeemable to her, but to the Galaxy, there was no justice without his head on a spike.

Finn's eyes well up, and Rose, who sits beside him, takes off her headset to hold him.

Rose, who he has loved since Crait. Rose, who he would give up the stars for. Rose, who he would lay down everything in front of just to make sure she smiled again.

"Finn?" Rey's cheeks are hot again with a stream of her tears.

"I know," he says, tears falling as he looks at Rose, who looks back at him ardently. "I know what that's like. We won this war by saving what we love, not killing what we hate."

Rey smiles from the other side of the receiver.

"Go save what you love Rey."

"I love you both, may the force be with you, always."

Rey slings the headset off quickly, drawing her hand over her mouth as she sobs into herself.

Chewie's hand rests on her shoulder as she moves to gather herself. There is only one more step on this path she started so long ago, one more thing left to do.

She moves to deboard, slinging a pack over her shoulder, but before she can move too far down the walkway out of the cockpit, Chewie stops her with a roar. She turns back.

"I'll take care of him. I promise."

Chewie's eyes are full of sadness, sadness for a boy he will never see again, for a man that could have been. Rey drops her pack and walks back to Chewie, who bends over so she can kiss his forehead, "I promise."

Chewie nods and a sad lament escapes him as Rey angles down the walkway and onto the disintegrating _Discord._ All she has to do is find a spot and wait. She knows he will come to her. He always does.

* * *

Rey posts herself at the end of a turbine tunnel, its huge, slowly moving blades framing her as she leans against the exposed rebar.

It was harder, here, to feel anything, encased in so much durasteel. She knew, from how long she had been down there, that the _Solace_ should have been docked by now, with her friends finding the injured and setting up triaging stations. They had run drills before, never for First Order soldiers, of course, but the same principles would apply, she was sure, just with more venomous rhetoric spewing from the wounded.

Briefly, she thinks of meditating, to get a better lock on where everyone truly is, but her body is too jittery with anticipation. Instead, she unsheaths her saberstaff and begins running forms.

Lightly padded steps echoing through the tunnel cause her to still, her staff poised above her head.

 _Kylo._

She's frozen, waiting for him to appear down the hall. Her breathing picks up, unsure of how it will go, after she left him here, after everything he must have survived to still be alive.

Before she can dwell, the hallway in front of her is alight in red, so much red that for a fleeting moment, she thinks the external fire must has moved inward, and that surely, this would be the end.

Her eyes sharply move into focus to see the true cause.

Hux, flanked by what must be a new version of the Praetorian Guard, stands at the end of the tunnel, staring up at her. They lock eyes, his blue glaze in terror as her hazel alight in rage. Images of First Order propaganda flash before her, filing back to the only time she had seen Hux previously, with his face next to Kylo's masked one, images beamed across the galaxy to breed hate.

Her eyes leave his, though, to the most immediate threats. The Guards armor is different, more amorphous, somehow, than it used to be, lacking the rigidity and sharp lines she remembers, but the color is still exactly the same, etched into her mind from that first time she fought by Kylo's side, instead of against him

Bile rises in her as her eyes tick back to Hux, the cause of all this pain, of all the bodies scraping up against the _Falcon_ , of Kylo struggling to get back to her. Without further thought, she finds herself running full speed down the hall, baring her teeth, spinning her saberstaff. She throws a guard down with a waved hand, and jumps, angling her red saber above Hux's sniveling face. She can see her amethyst in the cool blue of his eyes, terror washing over him and all she wants is to see the inside of his stupid head as she splices it through with her saber.

Hux falls backwards as the blade of a vibro-voulge collides with her laser. She can see him, backing up, hands and feet scurrying away from her on the ground, and a pride wells in her.

Quickly, she backs out of that feeling though, knowing that it wouldn't be productive, not with five Praetorians staring her down now.

They push her back down the hallway as she parries glances from both sides.

"I thought I killed you already," she screams over the hum of their weaponry, "I guess I'll just have to kill you again."

From behind their red armor, he sees Hux being helped to his feet by two remaining guards, and her heart drops as he begins moving in the direction of her friends.

 _No_.

Her strikes aim more true from that moment on.

* * *

Kylo follows on Hux's heels. It's less draining to stay two steps behind him, rather than in front. Armitage is nothing if not a forward thinker, leaving the area behind him safe from being re-examined in self-doubt.

He feels Rey, has felt her since she jumped in, but it's hard, now, to keep going. He had successfully launched a counterinsurgence from inside the veins of a dreadnought, funneling the power he had into actionable pieces to use against Hux. And it had worked, if the large nuclear blasts followed by echoing silence were any indication.

But Hux was still alive.

But so was Kylo. He is sure his left shoe is filled with blood, but he can't stop, can't risk being idle. He has to get to her.

He comes to a large hallway and pauses, feeling the string under his left rib tighten. She's near. Concentrating, he can feel her, so strong in the force. His soul lurches as he senses her adrenaline, her determination, but there is no fear, only calm power. Deeping this focalization on her, he senses the others, the guards. There are three waning on the ground, and only two more, scratch that, one more, to be defeated. A fleeting thought passes that she may need help, but he knows she doesn't. He smiles. She's his. That girl, no, that woman, with all her compassion and light and strength, is his.

Something else enters his connection with the force, then. The Resistance. They're onboard. He feels Hux moving closer to where they are huddled. Why are they here? The war is over, the First Order is powerless without their hoard, even the Pilot could see that.

But, he can feel them, loudly thrumming excitement through the force. The Pilot, the Traitor, the Other One, he can feel them all.

Tendrils of darkness flow in like tributaries on his heart.

It tastes like power. It tastes like domination.

It would be so easy, with her preoccupied. He could almost taste it. He would slaughter them, the Traitor, the Other One, the Pilot, most of all. His blood almost lusted for it. He could kill them and when she came to find him, their bodies would be strewn around him. He would look at her.

 _I tried to stop it, but…_

 _He saw the ghost of her pain. Her eyes welled in agony. He would be the one to catch her as she crumbled to the ground._

 _I'm here, I'm here._

 _She would press into his chest, her pain radiating through him, her darkness growing. She would allow it to defile her then, she would have to. And she would be his, totally. She would only be his. Totally his._

He looks down the corridor, where he knows Rey is.

He turns and limps in the other direction.


	22. Chapter 22

Rey's saber cuts through the thorax of the last Praetorian guard, jutting harshly up the torso, the soldier slumping its total weight down onto her weapon. Angling the staff upwards, she hears the clicks of whatever encases its heart slowly being broken apart by the lightsaber, before turning off the blades and pushing slightly on its collapsed head, watching it fall in slow motion backwards onto the pile of its brethren below.

The whirring of the fan behind her swarms back in, along with the smell of burnt armor and flesh, as she slips out of the pensive calm that now comes to mark her fighting.

At first it is just odd, seeing the guards slain in front of her, as if she is looking at a Luggabeast skeleton for the first time, trying to figure out where the machinery ends and the being begins. These living souls that are not living, these sentients without sense, these creatures in masks.

But creatures in masks rarely ever are just that.

She fights the want to reach out, to take the masks off, to see what lies beneath. It's always like this, after. Even on Jakku, when survival meant killing, it was always like this. It's surreal to be faced with the delicacy of life, how easily it switches off, how little it takes to snuff it out. That someone like her, a nothing from nowhere, can be the one who snatches it away, and so easily, without benediction, without solemnity.

And then, it is terrifying. She hears her saber drop, feels the ground raise up to hit her knees. Without thought, she moves to touch the scar she was graced with three years ago by these Praetorian's predecessors, still gashed deep into her arm. It's silvery and smooth a top a snarl of matted scar tissue, a physical reminder of the first time she joined Kylo. Proof, something that made it real in the intervening years that separated them, something that told her it was more than just a fever dream what happened between them.

Looking down at herself, she checks for wounds that maybe thrum of the force had masked, but finds nothing. Nothing but the scars that were already there.

The terror rises. Three years ago, that same fight, with another, more skilled combatant next to her had almost been her end. The hiss of their weapons, still buzzing unkempt on the floor in front of her now, brings the images of the throne room back to her mind. The way she had struggled to remain upright, the scrambling to land any hits, the intensity of all of it comes back.

And now, they're all just dead, just like that. Her breathing had barely picked up at all. Praetorians.

None of it makes sense, none of the past three years makes any sense. Maybe it is all just a fever dream, maybe she will wake up cooling in a pool of her own sweat on Jakku and that will be it. She looks at her hands, still traced with faint scars from her scavenging, and for the nth time, she wishes she had a teacher, a real teacher.

Luke was a right bastard, but it would have been nice to make sense out of all of this with him, to be formally trained instead of just an amalgamation of bits and pieces scavenged together from texts and the ideas of other people about what a Jedi is.

It scares her, and it doesn't, the amount of unfounded, untethered power she holds. It is both harmonious and alien. Intimate and foreign.

And yet.

And yet.

She has found a home in it, in this ragtag combination of parts that has become who she is now. Gone is the girl with her innocent, earnest resolve to find her place in all of this. She has found it. It is confusing and it is hard and it is terror inducing, but he, Kylo, he is there to help carry the weight of it all now, and when she looks at him, she knows that is her place.

 _And yet,_ he had moved away from her, just then, he had moved away from her and towards them, her friends. He must have felt Hux closing in, must have needed to get to him, to finish this, right?

Right.

Lactic acid bubbles into her heart as she breaks back to the reality she finds herself in now. Pulling herself up by the rebar, she trudges through the bodies of the Praetorians, scowling, and avoiding their still lit weapons, until she is free enough to start running.

Hux can't get to them, he can't. Kylo knows it, and she knows it. They need to get there first.

On a straight away, she realizes she doesn't quite know where she is running to, lost in a frenzy of action with no actual direction. Settling, she closes her eyes, trying to locate them. The ship is groaning, loudly, as she slips in and out of the force, steeping in death.

Beacons, like an old airstrip, light up through the encompassing darkness of the force. The dead, their signatures burn like black holes through the fabric, hazy at the edges as their signatures decompose back into antimatter, but the living, they blaze as if in direct opposition to the darkness.

It almost hurts, the juxtaposition between the two, but she can see it all, lined up for her. Kylo is closest, but dimmest, then Hux and his guards, then four signatures she recognizes immediately as Poe, Rose, Finn and Chewie are offset from the huge star that must be Kalonia and her crew, ferrying the injured onto the _Solace_ , their tired medical freighter, too dangerous to dock. She can sense the steady stream of transports back and forth from this ship, ferrying Troopers who are waning in the force.

Settling her attention back on her friends, she knows, knows immediately what they're doing, and also knows immediately how harebrained and cockamamie it is.

She can hear Poe's voice in her mind, "But if it works…"

If it works, the Resistance gets the survivors off safe. If it works, they've saved dozens, hundreds of lives. Lives that would spit in their face and spew vitriol, but lives. Lives like Finn.

They are the smoke screen, averting Hux's eyes from Kalonia, from the true operation, and Poe has decided to do it in style, parading all of the faces of the Resistance in front of him in a shiny package to distract the appearance-conscious General Hux.

Willingly, they are going to him willingly, this man who would gladly set himself on fire, self-immolate, if it meant that people would know it was him who won the war. They are delivering themselves to that man, willingly.

Part of her trusts Poe to know what he is doing, the other part knows without a doubt he has no clue.

They're getting close now, and she is still so, so far away.

She turns, and sprints, hoping beyond hope that it is not too late.

* * *

Everything is searing, the ship around him, the blood inside him, the force that runs through it all, it is all searing.

Kylo is limping behind Hux and the Praetorians, seeking out with the force so he only turns down a hall once Hux and his men have left it.

Through his link, he can feel the Resistance and Hux closing in on each other, like two missiles launched against each other in the night, nearing an imminent destruction both of them were built for.

Good. If they kill each other, both of his problems are solved.

Behind him, he can sense Rey's furious scramble. The Praetorians had fallen, he knew they would, knowing how strong she is in the force now. Not much could beat her now. He reckons, if he delivered her to Snoke today, it would be nothing but a flicker in her mind which would end him. This girl, this woman, his woman. Stuttering, he senses her as she feels out, trying to decide which direction to go. He makes himself as dim as possible to her, knowing there is no way she will get down here in time. Soon, it would just be them.

With that thought, his thigh muscle, being slowly eaten by the residual heat of blaster fire, seizes, almost crippling him to the ground. He grabs it and tamps down on it, increasing the pain exponentially, until he gets a hold of the muscle and violently rubs until the cramp stops, breaking him of all thought processes.

Hux is far ahead now so he picks up his limping to close the distance.

On the approach, Hux slows, as the Resistance must be within view. Kylo positions himself against a support beam, unseen to them, but having a front row to the action. He squeezes his leg, which lets out more black blood, before settling in for the show.

It is the Pilot, in his booming, larger-than-life voice, who talks first.

"Hugs, how are you? Long time. I can't say I like what you've done with the place, I passed by like 50 safety code violations on my way here. You gotta get someone to look at those."

"Ah, yes, General Dameron," Hux clicks his heels as he approaches, "Good to see you and your ilk are still so cocksure, even in the face of defeat."

Poe looks around, exaggeratedly, first just with his head, then his whole body, turning from side to side to take in the disintegrating ship around them, "Uh, you feeling alright, bud?"

"Never better General, why?"

"Well, for one, you're looking very pale, and all the rouge you have on to try to hide it," Poe's head ticks to the side, as if disappointed, "Buddy, we gotta talk about the rouge, your cheekbones, they're already magnificent, you don't need all that blush."

"I'm not wearing-" Hux sputters out.

"And second," Poe interrupts, "You have very clearly lost this war. We've come to discuss the terms of your surrender."

"Have you?" Hux replies, trying to regain his lost sense of composure.

"We have."

"You and?" the redhead looks around the the others, the Traitor, the Wookie, and the Other One. Kylo is watching, surprised at how calm they all seem.

"Oh, I guess you've never formally met. Hugs, this is Finn, you might know him as, what was it? FN..."

"2187," Finn's voice is cold and hard as he recites the letters of his former name, staring into the blue eyes of the man who ensured his continued slavery.

"Right, you know him, your former co-worker. I mean, as much as someone kidnapped as a child and forced into a brainwashing program to serve as disposable labor and expendable parts in a war machine can be considered a co-worker, I guess." Poe squeezes Finn's shoulder before moving to the Wookie, "And Chewbacca. You know Chewie, right? Legend, this guy. Master smuggler, Rebel Hero. They write children's books about him, you know? Maybe you've read them?" Poe smiles as he walks further, his voice and his face falling when he gets to Rose. All levity is gone when he introduces her, "And this is Rose, you don't know her, and you never will."

Poe walks back to his original spot before talking again, "Well…" Poe drags the words out, as if waiting in anticipation for something.

"Well?" Hux clips back.

"Aren't you going to introduce _your_ friends?" Poe looks to the two Praetorians which flank Hux, his eyes moving over each of their covered forms.

"Ah, right, how rude of me. Guards!" At the shrill of Hux's voice, a dozen Stormtroopers, their armor blindingly polished, as if for the one event, march in unison, surrounding them. Half border the four of them, squishing them further together, while the others line up perfectly next to Hux, his Praetorians framing him.

"I kinda walked into that one."

* * *

Rey's hair whips around her face, loosening gradually out of her buns, when she finally finds an opening amongst the never ending hallways. This ship, while bearing most of the hallmarks of an Empire-built ship, is uniquely maze like, and it occurs to her that may be purposeful, this being Kylo's flagship. He knew this was coming. He had been preparing.

There is an impossible wind that seems to be coming from directly in front of her, throwing her off kilter. Edging towards it, the tiny hallway opens into a expansive cavern, too high for her to see the top of, and too deep to see the bottom. She stands on the precipice of it all, a speck amongst this technological marvel. It's a reactor shaft, she realizes, bigger than any she had seen before, but all it reminds her of it Mustafar now, and not the skeletons of ships she had grown up amongst.

She peers over the edge, and sees it, a walk way, maybe hundreds? Thousands? of meters below. It floods her mind until she sees the movement she already knows is there, just beyond, on the other side of the crevasse.

They're all just dots, but she is so well acquainted with all of their forms that she can tell it's them.

Her friends, flanked by Stormtroopers, stripping Poe, Rose, Finn and Chewie of their weapons. Their movements, all of them, are stuttered, not fluid and easy, and it is odd to see the action, but not be a part of it, to not be able to help.

Reaching out, she feels the feverish work of Kalonia and Pava, getting transports out with outrageous speed.

Her back straightens at their commitment, at this stalling. It's either brilliant or the worst idea Poe has ever had, likely, though, it is both.

Why isn't Kylo there yet? He is so dim in the force, it only serves to scare her further. She takes one final look at her friends, hoping it is not the final look, and resumes running.

* * *

"Tell me, General Dameron, how does it feel to finally be at the end? To know, once and for all, that your precious hope has been extinguished? That the Resistance is finally at an end? To look into the eyes of the new Supreme Leader of the Galaxy?"

"I mean, I feel a little gassy, but that could just be that vegmeat we ate last night and have nothing to do with this."

"Hit him," Hux, devoid of any of the joy he had in questioning Poe, commands, and a bone crunching smack of blaster heel meets Poe's face.

The tension in the room rises tenfold, as a greasy smile permanently plasters itself across Hux's face.

It takes Poe more than a few moments before he recovers, holding his face and doubling over.

When he does, laughter bubbles up from his form, as he stands tall, spitting blood. He smiles, the trademark Poe smile, his teeth coated in red, before wiping his mouth to speak, "Honestly, Hugs? Honestly, I feel great. Better than ever, because I know something you don't. You want to know what it is?"

Hux stares forward, not willing to give in, but he does, because he always will, "What's that?"

"I know that we're not the Resistance. No, we never really were, despite what you think, despite how caught up by appearances you are. The Resistance is out there, in the hearts of every person who you have oppressed or enslaved. Every person who has ever felt the injustice of your organization, and trust me, that's a lot of people."

Hux shifts uncomfortably, his stalk straight spine writhing a bit, before catching himself.

Poe notices his shifting and smiles again before continuing, "No, we're not the Resistance, and when we die here, as I'm sure we will, as I'm sure you and your guards will ensure, the Resistance will not die, because you fail to understand that the Resistance isn't just a few people, it's an idea, one that will live on far beyond the walls of this stupid ship." Poe face is resolute now, the lines that run across it deepening, making him seem so much older, "The First Order though, the First Order will die here, on this ship, in this little part of the Galaxy, and become nothing to history. Your soldiers, they're being ferried to our ships as we speak, willingly. Your cause is weak, mayhem and destruction and power seeking always are, in the face of good. The First Order, it's just you now, and even if you escape, even if you make it off this scrap, it will die a small death in a small way in a small place, like you."

Hux smiles, "Quite the orator, Dameron. Too bad that little speech will die here, with you, it really was quite something. Completely erroneous and wrong of course, but something."

The expression that smothers Hux's face, Kylo has seen the look from Hux before, the look of complete smug confidence. He takes a survey of the situation, squeezing his bleeding leg to try to alleviate some of the sting.

It's then he realizes, this is a firing squad. This is a firing squad and the Pilot hasn't figured it out yet.

"You were right about one thing, though. Your death, it is coming." Hux allows his confidence to swell, his heels clacking as he takes a step, then another, towards the Resistance, "The punishment for our enemies, Dear General, is quick. Maybe too quick, too merciful for thieves and murderers like you, but somehow, to die like the common fodder seems _right._ "

It's then Dameron knows, Kylo can see it in his face. Dameron looks from side to side, taking inventory of those around him. Kylo does the same: the Traitor, the Wookie, the Other One. Dameron slowly puts his arms out, as if to corral them behind him, to protect them. Kylo can see the Pilot whisper, but there is no doubt, not from any of them, nothing but resolve in the face of their own martyrdom, an act Hux is too dumb to know he is leading.

Kylo's eyes snap to Hux. He has no idea. All he knows is that, to him, this is winning. There is something like pure joy at seeing these members of the Resistance wither away from him. It spreads across the redhead's face, a sickening smile curling his face into something sinister and odd.

"Ah, so we understand each other then, General. I thought we might. Line them up!"

The Stormtroopers jut out from either side, moving closer, but before they can reach the group, the Resistance members line themselves up, standing side by side, all their heads high and not a tear in sight.

"Ah, obedience. I didn't expect that from the scum," Hux smiles, as if in on some sort of joke with the guards, but none of them react with him.

They're all silent, something rare for the Resistance leaders, even Kylo knows that.

Their hands, the four of them, start to move in unison, just slightly, and Kylo thinks that maybe this is it, maybe this is the plan. The troopers notice the minute movement, and the room around them echoes with the clicking of blasters as they all tighten their grasps, waiting for invisible weapons to be drawn.

Instead of seeing them reach for impossibly hidden weapons though, Kylo sees something that makes his blood run cold and hot at the same time. They all, instinctually, reach for each others' hands, linking themselves in a chain. They stand still, holding hands, staring down the barrels of countless blasters, waiting.

In front of him, he sees a family.

Kylo hears his breathing pick up, but he doesn't know why. He looks down to his wound, festering, and maybe, maybe there's an infection. As he thinks it, he is flushed, his body alight in warmth, and all his senses flood. There is a sound to it, almost, like his skin is crackling and cracking off, but nothing is happening. Intellectually, he knows nothing is happening, and now he can't even look at them, at their hands joined, at what that must be like. He knows, though, doesn't he? He knows what that is like.

There is a weight in his own hand, but there isn't, he knows there isn't, but it's there and he's crying. He can see himself, so little, his hands both so warm, one enveloped in his father's calloused hand, the other, his mother's delicate soft fingers. They're swinging him down the walkway of the _Falcon_ and he is laughing. They are all laughing.

He tries to push it out, he tries to find the dark center, but he can't, all he can feel is the love. And then it's not even his own love, but some deep ancestral love, and he sees two babies, two small, and nestling babies, and feels her hands reach out for theirs, weakly, but with so much conviction. He can feel it all in his chest, her chest, his grandmother's chest, as she looks down at her babies with her dying breath, as her hands grab their impossibly small ones, he feels, she feels, his uncle and his mother, her son and her daughter. Her hope, his hope rips him open.

And then there's Rey, but there's not. He's him again, but he's not. She's there but he knows she's not, her skin glowing with the fire on Ahch-To, so beautiful, so beautiful and his but not his yet, not then. Tears are streaming down her face, and her tears are streaming down his face and her hand is in his, so briefly, but they're there. His family. All of his family and something blooms white hot in his chest, so hot he grabs at it, trying to rip it out, but it's there, so deep, like it always was, like he has known it always has been, flowing out to all his veins.

"Present weapons," Hux's voice pierces through Kylo and he freezes.

"Take aim," it's like a dream, everything gone hazy. Kylo turns his head to see them, the four of them, their hands still linked.

"Shoot straight you bastards," the Pilot's voice rings out above the fog.

"Fire!"

All four shut their eyes tightly at the sound, but Kylo keeps his open.

* * *

Poe counts, one second, two seconds, three, before opening his eyes to see lasers suspended in air inches from their chests. Above the singe of the red, he sees Hux's face, dropped in disbelief.

"Kylo Ren," is all Poe can breathe out, before the lasers are launched back at the Guards, killing the Stormtroopers and stumbling the Praetorians.

Before another word can land, a black mass appears in front of them, the red "t" of his saber cutting like an inferno, making everything else around it dimmer, somehow.

"Run," is all that comes from Kylo's voice, almost too deep to hear. Poe wouldn't believe this was him, the Kylo Ren, if he hadn't seen him crumble on Mustafar. He seems so much smaller than the holos, so much more of a man and less of a deity.

All the Resistance fighters stand still, unbelieving, not reacting to Kylo's command.

"RUN!" the dull brass comes from deep inside the belly of the Supreme Leader, underlain with terror.

It is then they start moving, but are quickly cut off by troopers on either side.

"Ah, good, I get to kill you all. Take out the trash together. Makes it easier on all of us," Hux's words are confident, but his face has fallen into a stony glare, his smiles all gone.

Flanked by fighters, Kylo's face deepens. His left hand lowers the edge of his saber down to Hux, pointing at him, as his right raises up, before clenching tightly, crumpling the troopers weapons behind him.

Finn is the first to notice the troopers confusion, and takes the opportunity to elbow one in the face. The Trooper stumbles back, breaking all hell loose.

Behind Kylo, the Resistance and the troopers devolve into an all out brawl, but his eyes stay focused on Hux, as the Praetorians arch around, their weapons glowing red.

* * *

She finds herself further down, but still not close enough to the walkway. Her eyes dart back and forth, looking for an easier way down, but there is none, it appears as if the First Order started making their ships more climb proof after Starkiller.

Wishing she had her climbing materials, she moves to step back to resume her dash, before it catches her eye from across the ravine.

 _Kylo._

Across the valley, she seems them, all of them, fighting. Kylo, his black form in the center, ensconced in the red from his saber and the Praetorians. Instinctively, she ignites her own saberstaff, as if to help, but deep shame burrows into her as she realizes she is standing in full form across a crevasse with no one to fight. She sheathes her weapon and takes stock of the situation at hand.

On one side of Kylo's fight, a single figure stands, hands clasped behind their back. Hux. Of course, Hux, not getting his own hands dirty. He is surrounded by his own fallen soldiers, a sight that twists in Rey's stomach. This fight has been raging for sometime as she ran, she realizes, and a sense of deep helplessness washes over her.

On the other side, her eyes flick to more troopers, more threats to Kylo, until she sees quick, interspersed flashes of Poe, Finn, and Rose and Chewie raging above their white armor. Her soul swells when she sees Rose kick the legs out from beneath one of the guards, and Chewie repeatedly smash the heads together of two of the troopers. They were handling it. Unarmed and outmanned, her friends were still handling it.

Pausing, she returns her gaze to Kylo's form in the middle.

Consciously, she knows he is injured, knows he has been injured for many days now, but it is another matter to see the physical proof of it in his body. The way he is moving, it is languid and messy. He is overcompensating on his right side, and the Praetorians, they're so close to him now. His arms are working furiously, twisting furiously to keep them at bay, but he is planted firmly, unable to move.

Everything in her is screaming at her to move, she needs to move, she needs to get to him, but she is mesmerized. It occurs to her that she has seen him fight like this before, when a bowcaster had pierced his side, but this is so much worse.

He's injured and the last time he was injured, she, a novice, almost bested him, would have bested him. And he is up against two Praetorians.

 _No_.

There's no more time. Before she realizes, she is running again, tears streaming hot down her face.

* * *

Rose's foot connects with the stomach of the last trooper as Finn catches him from behind, twisting his neck and releasing as it falls down in the pile with the rest of them.

They move to run forward, to advance, as Kylo Ren kneels, showering in the sparks of his weapon holding off the two Praetorians.

In the time they laid waste to the remaining eight Stormtroopers, Ren had been struggling to land any hits on the Praetorians. Instead, his own body is littered in burn marks from deflecting their blows.

As the Resistance advances, unarmed, a Praetorian decides that they, their maudlin crew, are more of a threat than the Supreme Leader and moves off him, pointing its weapon straight at the four, causing them to pause immediately in their trajectory.

Kylo Ren crumbles, all fight gone, and the remaining Praetorian's weapon inches closer and closer to his throat.

"Wait!"

It could have been anyone's voice, but it's Hux, and his guard immediately pauses, Ren a sweaty and bloody heap on the floor, his own lightsaber threatening himself as much as the Praetorian's weapon.

"I want this one for myself."

With those words, the Praetorian is immediately off Kylo and with its sibling, pointing his weapon, too, at the Resistance members, who stand mouths open, watching Kylo as he writhes helplessly. This man, this being, that they had seen do wondrous, terrifying things with nothing but his mind, so tired, so spent, so grievously injured, that he is nothing but a mark on the ground now. It is something none of them ever imagined they would ever see.

Kylo's body lays spitting blood on the ground, heaving with each breath, as Hux clicks towards him, until Hux's perfectly polished boots are right in front of Kylo's face on the ground.

"Ah, finally, the natural order of things," Hux breathes out, something almost erotic underlying it, as he edges his boots closer and closer to Kylo's face.

The Praetorians, in their own order, move for the jugular of Poe. Before the strike lands, however, Hux screams out a hurried no.

"No, no, don't be hasty now. Make them watch. I want them to see what is coming for them next, and for everyone who dares to defy me in this piteous Galaxy."

Poe and Finn are struggling against the Praetorians, while they keep their weapons on them. One weapon is pointed directly at the Wookie's throat, preventing movement to the largest threat as Hux plays with his catch in front of them.

"I have waited so long for this moment, Kylo Ren." Hux's words are thick as Kylo's name slips past his lips like a slow syrup, Hux savoring every drop.

There is blood pouring out of the side of Kylo's stomach, from a wound he had not felt the Praetorian's give him. He can feel himself fading, his edges getting dimmer. He tries, and tries, to reach out for the force, as he has been, tries, but fails to grasp it, his connection to this world weakening.

Hux swings his leg back, before bringing it disastrously forward to kick Kylo fully in the face, his black hair jerking back until Kylo is fully on his back. Finn, Poe, Rose, and Chewie jostle the guards, but all it serves to do is turn the vibrating blades closer to the necks. Slowly, blood starts pooling around Kylo's body.

Hux leans down, his venomous words spewing out, hot on Kylo's cooling face.

"Snoke saw this in you, you know. Your weakness, your vulnerability. Turning tail in your last stand, Ren?" Hux clicks his tongue, "How very pedestrian. So trite and unimaginative, I thought maybe there would be more to you."

Hux leans further, closer to Kylo now, as Kylo's eyes dilate and constrict, looking just beyond Hux, not willing to give him the satisfaction of eye contact.

"I will admit, you put up a fine final hurrah. A damn fine display of all your _might._ Futile, unproductive, and inadequate, of course, but a fine show of all that innate skill I always heard so much about from Snoke."

"Hux!" it's a desperate attempt to stall on Poe's part, with no plan backing it up, but it gets Hux's attention off Kylo, for just a moment.

"Now you get my name right, I see," Hux's cheeks are red against the paleness of his skin, his rage bringing life to the surface, "Fear has a way of making people remember, doesn't it?," Hux grins, again, for the umpteenth time that day, unsettling everyone in the room, "This is my moment, Dameron, see yourself out of it."

"You slimy fucking weas-"

"Shut him up!" Hux points and the guard, once again, smacks Dameron in the face. He stumbles back into Chewie before settling, dazed.

"Anything else?" Hux's voice is short as he looks to the remaining Resistance, "FN? Area Rug? Girl?" His eyes gloss over theirs, "No, I didn't think so."

"Where were we? Ah," Hux leans down, closer still, "I remember." Slowly, Hux takes the gloves off his own hands, one by one, until his pale, long fingers are exposed. He stretches and retracts them in gnarled movement before he crouches, almost delicately, and wraps his hands around Kylo's throat, feeling the slowing pulse of the man in front of him.

"There was a time I feared you, once. But now I see what you are, I see what Snoke saw every time he looked at you. A sad, desperate child, left alone and abandoned. Easily malleable," his fingers dig into Kylo's flesh, "Ah, so _easily_ malleable."

"Not a god, not a _Supreme Leader_. Just a little boy, sad and alone. But, I'm not Snoke, not at all. It is you who is going to sputter and die under _my_ hands. Just. Like. This."

Hux's hands tighten around Kylo's throat, cutting off all air. Kylo twitches, his face deepening into red, then purple. Grotesque veins, pop under the skin, but he doesn't bring his own hands up to fight, he doesn't waste that energy when there is something more pressing that he needs to do with his last bit of life.

As the edges go fuzzy on his vision, he reaches out, amongst the fabric of the force.

 _Rey_.

Somewhere close he feels her heels dig in, stalling in her full sprint, and knows she's heard him.

 _Rey, I'm sorry. I love y-_

At that very moment, a deep, desperate sound comes from behind Hux, shattering the final moments of Kylo Ren.

The edges around his vision have gone fully black now, but Kylo is conscious enough to see the cause of it, barreling into his field of sight above him. He thinks, for a moment, it may be Rey, but she is still too far, too far.

Hux's fingers go slack on his throat as the Wookie barrels into view, his large body forcing the Praetorians forward with him.

He is running full speed, so quickly, his strides being so long, and Hux can barely look up before the bloodied Wookie is on top of him.

The Praetorians weapons have almost sliced through Chewie, and there is blood, everywhere, trickling over Kylo, who is already so bloody. Chewbacca, his body, it is almost fully severed, but he is still moved forward, rushing towards the valley behind them.

And the screaming comes then, from the Resistance, from the Pilot, the Traitor, the Other One, all screaming the Wookie's name, all screaming for Chewie, but he is not stopping. He is almost cut fully through now, but he is not stopping. He plows through Hux and now carries all three bodies in front of him as he heads for the crevasse some yards off.

Kylo gasps out in, coughing out blood before turning sharply and reaching out for the Wookie.

He grasps, trying desperately for the force, trying desperately to hang on to the last branch of his family tree.

And then the Wookie looks back, as his body, in pieces, topples into the abyss below, his eyes, with their last spark of life, meeting Kylo's. It is only for a second, but Kylo can see everything he had forgotten in Chewie's eyes. Everything he had been trying to ignore, trying to stamp down into oblivion was staring back at him in Chewie. The deflected bowcaster shots, the pain, the truth, it all comes back. And suddenly, he is four years old again, playing hide and seek in the _Falcon,_ his cheeks stinging from holding in a laugh as Chewie very theatrically grunted and guffawed at not being able to find him.

He is seven and Chewie is slipping him extra bread rolls under the table, away from the careful watch of his mother's strict nutritional eye.

He is ten and can't, could never, remember to switch the sublight engines to neutral before take off, always causing Han to blow a proverbial gasket at the ineptitude of it all, and Chewie, he knows, so he does it for him, when Han isn't looking, every time.

He is twelve, and they are leaving him at The Academy. His mother, she couldn't make it away form the Senate for long enough but to give him a tearful goodbye on Chandrila, so it's just his dad, and the Wookie. His dad can't look at him, won't look at him, not after everything, he just ruffles his hair and says good luck, practically shoving him at Luke. At twelve, this had been proof that Han didn't care, didn't love him. Now he knows, it was too hard, too much, to see his only son having to be raised by someone else because he couldn't handle him, didn't know how to care for him.

But Chewie, Chewie kneels and hugs him for what seems like minutes, allowing him to shed the last tears he would shed for his family for years into the Wookie's fur, unseen and unheard. He doesn't pull away, not ever, not until he's ready.

Suddenly, looking at Chewbacca for the final time, he is Ben again.

"Chewie," is all he can manage to breathe out, and then, he's gone. Over the edge, with Hux and the last sentinels of the First Order with him.

They seem to drag all the sound out of the room with them, down the ravine.

There is silence.

And then it all goes black.

* * *

Her lungs, they burn, but she doesn't, she can't, there's no way she is stopping, and then she is there.

She is there and it's over. Everything grows thick and it is hard for her to move when she sees it, sees them, sees it.

It. _Him._

On the ground, in a sea of black liquid, lays Ben Solo.

Rey runs, before she can think, before she can breathe, she runs, sliding on the blood, grabbing Ben and cradling him to her.

"What-how?", the words escape her, asked to no one, despite the fact that her friends stand dumbfounded behind her, shocked into submission by the carnage they just witnessed, the carnage which still marrs the stage. But Rey, she doesn't know, everything in her too clouded, she doesn't know what just happened, she only knows she felt him reach out, and then she didn't, and now she's here.

"He..we...He s _aved_ us," Rose is the only one who can speak. There are troopers everywhere, littering the ground in white and red, and red, and red. The three of them stand in the middle of it all, with Rey, her grey robes turning more and more red with every passing moment, the liquid from so much blood seeping up until she's covered in it, and Rey doesn't even realize, can't even realize, that it is three instead of four now. Rey doesn't even hear Rose's response over the ringing. All she can see is Ben, all her senses tunnel in on him, until she can pick up on his faint breathing.

Her hand runs down his cheek, and how cold he already is shocks her into action.

"Ben, Ben, please," her voice is a prayer as she tightens her grip around him, shaking his body slightly.

His eyes flutter open, and she can see them struggling to focus on her face, but when they do, there is such warmth in them. So much warmth encased by the cool of his skin.

"Rey…" even his breath is cool on her face.

She feels it then, against the fabric of her leggings, the red hot blood running out like sand pouring from a sieve on his side.

"Please..."

He reaches up his hand to cradle her face, "Rey, it's okay."

"No, no please…" she isn't sure who she is pleading with, him, the force, the fabric of the Universe itself, she just needs something to listen, something to stop this.

"It's okay," he repeats, as if that makes it true.

"Don't. I can't..." she means to say so much more, she means to say that she can't bear this alone again, she can't do this without him, that she needs him, here with her, she needs him.

He catches it in her thoughts.

"That's not true, scavenger," his voice is clear there, like the first time they met, and she smiles, despite herself, at the nickname. It had been so long since he had called her that.

She sees him swallow, hard, before his next words come out, more hoarse than she has heard his voice, "I used to think that you weren't a part of this story. How could you be? You weren't a Skywalker, you had no lineage," a soft sob escapes her, and she moves to quiet him, to tell him to stop, because the blood, it was too much, but he keeps talking anyway, "Then I thought that you were made for me, to be part of my story, to be what I needed." His eyes search hers as his thumb runs across her tears, and his head slowly shakes, "But now I know none of that is true. This is your story Rey. You are it. You are the balance the force needs. You're going to save this awful Galaxy from itself. You. Alone."

"No, Ben. I'm not that person, not without you. Please, don't go, there's so much more."

He smiles, at his name, his real name, once again coming from her lips, "Not for me. This, you, this is all I have ever wanted."

She grips him tighter, pulling him closer to her chest, his massive body limp in her arms. He reaches out his hand to tuck back the strands of hair that had come loose from her buns. His eyes nudge hers, and Rey quickly blinks out her tears, not wanting him to be blurry. She had enough of blurry Kylo Ren, and not enough of the tangible Ben Solo, laying in her lap. She notices his eyes becoming dimmer, losing their life, and panic surges. This can't be it. Not after the bond, not after the hut, not after the fighting and the visions and everything the force had done to drive them to each other. Her mind played through the permutations, searching for anything, anything that would change this fate.

"He had dark hair. Dark hair and pale skin and my eyes staring back at me."

Ben's face contorts in confusion. He thought his blood loss had made him hear incorrectly, the quick descent into death's hallucinations starting.

"Our son, Ben, our son. When I saw him in the forest. He was you and me."

A smile spreads across his impossibly pale face and a guttural sob escapes Rey's lips. She presses her forehead against his and their tears flow together.

"Stay, please, stay," it's a hopeless plea, escaping her lips.

"I love you," he breathes, his hand is falling from her now, but his eyes are still focused, so focused, on her.

She opens her mouth to say it, but stops, not wanting to make it real, not wanting to let go.

 _I love you._

Sparks from the dying ship surround them, haloing Ben in her tears _._ Everything is silent and slow, hiding the chaos below, when Kalonia slides in, minutes? Hours? Days? later, moving in slow motion.

Kalonia, who had delivered Ben Solo into this galaxy, was now here to try to save him from exiting it. Sometime in these intervening minutes, Finn had run as fast as he could to get her from the _Solace,_ where she had been triaging survivors.

When Rey looks up, she sees Kalonia on her knees beside them, her arms stretch out to receive him, but not taking him.

"Can I see him, please?" she is asking Rey permission, and Rey realizes how tightly she is holding Ben's body to her chest, as if still protecting him from the entirety of the Universe, the Universe who had used him up and spit him out and left nothing but horrors in its wake.

Rey loosens her grip, and lets Ben slip between herself and Kalonia, his body already limp. She is careful with him, not letting any part of him jerk or fall, keeping her fingers laced in his wet hair as his head settles on the ground beneath them.

Kalonia is quick, assessing wounds, cutting open his pants and shirt, cauterizing what she can. She works for what feels like an eternity, but what may be actually less than five minutes before her eyes ever look at Rey. Soon, they are both covered in his blood as his face changes, the muscles underneath his ashen pallor releasing.

"I can't get a hold on the bleeding. He's going to bleed out," Kalonia's face shoots up to meet Rey's own, "I...I don't know…"

Rey looks in confusion down at the wound, dark blood spilling out of his side, coating both their hands in its viscosity. Desperately, as if she can hold it in, she lays her hands on it, gathering the leaking blood. What he is, who he is, is escaping through that hole, so slowly, hot sand running through a sieve, and Rey, she can't stop it.

Rey forces her eyes down to look at him, unconscious and pale, "Please, please."

Around her, she can sense the tension. Poe's hands are in his face and Rose is crying in Finn's arms.

Rey wants to take the pain from Ben, wants to carry their burdens together. She wants to knit him together and keep him here. But if she can't, she wants to share in this death with him.

She closes her eyes and imagines the wound knitting itself together, sinew by sinew rejoining. Organs healing themselves and lacing the skin. The blood, the black blood, turning red again, then blue, as it re-enters his veins. His lungs restarting, filling, each alveoli expanding as if it were his first breath.

From within her, she feels her body temperature rise, slowly, but she's not focused on that. All she can do is dream, dream of a Ben that is whole again.

And then, she is hot, too hot, burning from the inside out, and Jakku's sun, it comes back to her, except this time, it is in her soul, burning through her own organs through her own flesh. It's so painful, all of it, but she welcomes it, welcomes it if it means she is feeling what he felt. Welcomes it if it means she is closer to him again.

Rey tries to open her eyes again, but finds that she can't, as if she has been frozen.

And then, everything goes white.


	23. Chapter 23

"Hey."

"Hi?"

She is still cradling his invisible body, still covered in his blood, but he isn't in her arms anymore. He is standing above her, everything around him coated in the thick fog of the force.

There is a weird pull, where she knows she should be panicking, but her heart isn't picking up, and she's staring at him, and he looks so young, like he did when she first saw him, like he does sometimes when he's nervous.

It's awkward, just for a moment, as she adjusts, staring up at him, then down to where he had been just seconds earlier, trying to make sense of it all.

As she looks down, she sees her clothes have changed, under the red are her Jakku rags, the clothes she hasn't worn in years, the clothes he first saw her in. Her eyes snap back to his.

He has the audacity to smile.

The force is swirling all around them, emitting a low sound that she can only describe as purring, having heard a loth-cat once, warm and sated under the brush on Lothal, do the same. The sound settles deep into her bone marrow, coupling with his lopsided smile, causing something inside her to jump.

It's like she is in a dream, and is only now realizing how surreal it all is, how all the pieces don't add up. It's Ben, it's Ben who is smiling down at her and she is just staring back, open mouthed and stupid. It's Ben and he is clear and crisp in this plane, where he has only ever appeared to her as a foggy approximation of Kylo Ren. It's Ben, and he's not gone.

She wants to stand up, wants to touch him, wants to press her fingers into his flesh to make sure this is real, but she's afraid if she touches him, he will disintegrate into the ether. So she stays stock still, not willing to break this, whatever this is, and tries to control her breathing.

But Ben can tell, like he can always tell, and he moves, quickly and slowly at the same time. And then, his hands are in hers and she is standing right in front of him. And then, his hands are on her face, tilting her chin up to look at him, and his smile is gone, but his eyes, they show everything, as they flit between hers.

"I'm here. You're not alone."

Her hands find his forearms and dig, testing him, and when she finds he is solid, that he is no longer like sand under her fingertips, tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.

"Ben," her voice breaks, raising softly at the end as if it were a question, as if she were questioning the fabric of reality itself, questioning his existence here, after feeling his blood running through her fingers, feeling him viscerally leave her

"Say it again," his hands, they tighten, ever so slightly around her face. He is shaking, she realizes, as her face gently vibrates with him. It's her first clue that he is just as bewildered and scared by this as she is. It is comforting, somehow, sharing this stupefaction with him.

"Ben-," she moves to say more, but whatever it is she was going to say is silenced, his lips crashing on top of hers. The breath she sucks in, surprised, lifts her heart up, and it feels like everything is lifted, everything is floating, his lips on top of hers. They are suspended, the both of them, for a moment, the feeling of lightness tethered by their kiss.

He breaks from her, slightly, her heart is stuck somewhere above her throat, and his lips drag across hers slowly, as if he couldn't stand for them to leave her, his breath hot on her face, "Again."

"Ben," it comes out in one breath, as his lips move up, kissing the tears that fall from her face, "Ben," she breathes again and his lips skim down to jawline, "Ben," his mouth ghosts her neck, before coming back up to her lips, as he punctuates his name falling from her lips over and over again with his kisses, his lips never daring to leave her skin.

He finds the strength to break himself away, finally, after they both are so warm, after being so cold for so long, and rests his forehead to hers, "I didn't know, if you would ever call me that again, I didn't know after Crait, after that, if you would ever-"

It's her turn now, to initiate the kiss, catching his lips to stop him from saying such ridiculous things. She feels it, then, when his lips uptick into a smile against hers. Her smile follows, until they are just standing there, like fools, smiling at each other, as the force swirls around them.

She notices, while looking more fully at him, that his clothes, too, have changed. He's wearing the robes she saw in her vision of that night at Luke's temple, his Uncle's saber casting green on his young face.

Something hits her then, the cold water of her shock pooling in her stomach. This isn't right, none of it is right. Pulling away suddenly, she looks between their bodies, grasping at reality.

The smile falls from her lips as her eyes skim his body, her head slowly shaking back and forth. There's no blood on him, none, his clothes, his hands, his face, they are completely clean, as if he just dried himself from the fresher. This can't be real. She held him, she felt him leave, she watched him die.

When she looks back up at him, his smile is gone.

"This isn't-"

"Rey," he interrupts, his voice soft.

She immediately moves, grabbing at his robes, tugging them up, not ungently, to reveal the pale skin underneath, where his major wound was pouring blood just minutes earlier, and finds nothing.

Her hands skim over his skin, and his abs contract under her touch, as if surprised at feeling her hands there again.

Looking back at his face, her arm immediately stretches out, and her fingertips, featherlight, skim the side of his face where his scar is. That scar, it exists, it's real, but not the Praetorian's wounds, there is nothing there at all to suggest that pain had ever touched him in that spot.

"How?" her eyes search his for answers.

Suddenly, his large hand finds her hip, and he squeezes, drawing her nearer to him.

"It was you."

"Me?" her head recoils back as if trying to distance herself from her own question as it leaves her.

"You don't even realize, do you?" something happens to his eyes, as he says it, they get darker and brighter at the same time, "You don't even know?"

At his questions, the air around them shifts, and a crackle runs through it like thunder. It is sudden and deafening, ripping through the static. They break apart instantly, standing back to back in balanced stances, waiting for the enemy to appear. They are both so well versed in battle that they forget for a moment that there could be no enemies here, would be none, this deep into the plane of the force.

Ben grabs for her hand behind him and they look around. All around them, it's still white and calm. There is no visual evidence of a change, nothing but the low roar of something ripping white hot through the fabric of this place. Their eyes meet, and they know, somehow they know what's going to happen next.

"Wait, no."

"It's okay, Rey."

"No, it's not enough time, it's never enough time."

"There will be. I promise you there will be."

She can feel it then, the tug in her stomach, the string to him tightening as it grows more taut, but he's still in front of her, not gone, not yet.

"Please," and Ben knows she's not saying it to him, but to the force around them.

She reaches up to touch him, but her hands don't land. He is there, but he's gone. A voice, deep and brass, envelops her from all angles:

"I'll come back for you sweetheart. I promise."

And then, all the sound turns off, sucked out with Ben. He's gone. Where he stood is a fading afterimage, searing pink and distorted, and then, that too is gone.

Her breathing picks up and she's alone. A breeze wafts through the plane, the air returning. She lets it skim over her, focusing on how it flows around her, trying to calm herself. And then, it's like he was never there, and the panic sets in fully, her mind brimming with too many questions to grasp just one, and she wants to fall, to give up, to scream, but her legs won't let her. She stays rooted as tears shimmer in her eyes, obscuring her vision. The pure white envelopes her, and she feels like she could lose herself in it, should lose herself in it.

But before she can break apart completely, before she can disintegrate into the cosmos, something else flickers into existence.

It shimmers in her tears as she blinks them out. A pinprick of something in the distance. It grows closer, and she isn't sure if she is walking to it, or if it's coming closer to her.

Shaking, her hands come up to wipe the fallen tears, and then, it's right in front of her, tiny and blue and beautiful. Its petals are just as she remembers, pale and delicate, but so strong, so resilient. Before she knows what she is doing, she is stooped down, her fingers resting on its stem, grazing its petals.

She feels her face unwillingly break into a smile, and the sound comes back, a dull hum.

It's the first flower she found on Jakku, the first flower she put in her AT-AT, the first small piece of beauty that gave her hope in a hopeless place. She knows, somehow, that this is the same flower, the exact same one, the one she thought she would never, ever see again, come back to her.

As the petals run smooth under her touch, a voice flows from behind her, arriving just now from the megacosm. It's bathed in a Coruscanti accent.

"Rest easy, you've had a busy day."

Rey straightens her spine. She knows exactly who she will see when she turns around.

* * *

"What do you mean? What does that mean?"

"Finn-"

"No, what does it _mean_?!"

"It means I don't know."

"You're a doctor, how can you just not know? She doesn't have any wounds, you said everything is okay, her brain, her organs, they're all okay. So why isn't she waking up?"

They've all not slept in more than a full day, maybe more than two, but Kalonia, her work has been ceaseless, her eyes deeply set into dark circles on her face.

"I-," she closes her eyes softly, for a beat, and then another, as if resting in a microburst, "I'm a scientist, Finn. I know science and medicine. I know the limits of the natural world. But I also am not so obtuse that I don't recognize the very real phenomena that sometimes finds its way into our universe." She takes a deep breath, and turns to look at Rey's still body before continuing, "What happened back there-that wasn't science, that wasn't medicine. I don't know how any of that works, and I don't know why she's not waking up. I wish I did, I wish I could make it better, I just don't know."

"She needs to wake up,"

Kalonia's nods as her eyes fix on the ground, swallowing hard.

"She _needs t_ o wake up," he repeats into the air, his desperation quieting him into a whisper.

"I know Finn," Rose, who is sitting next to him, close enough to hear that whisper, answers back, tightening her hand in his.

"It's over. It's over and we were supposed to...I don't know, see the galaxy, be normal. Be _people_ , for once. And she just-she won't wake up," he's not talking to Kalonia anymore, or Rose, he's just talking.

Rose's head slumps on his shoulder as a tear rolls down her face.

The three of them all stare at Rey's peaceful body, watching her slow breathing, for a long time.

Until suddenly, the air in the room changes, the light becoming dimmer somehow, and they turn to see Ben Solo in the doorway.

No one moves for a very long time, their gaze shifted from staring at Rey to staring at him.

"You can't _be here_ ," Rose breaks first, hissing at Ben as she stands and moves towards him too quickly, before Finn reaches out calmly, intertwining his fingers delicately with hers, and stops her.

She spins, confused, and stills at Finn's solemn face, shaking his head no at her.

Turning back, Rose's eyes harden, but she steps back, allowing Ben to see Rey, making a pathway that he clears in two steps to get to her.

Still in his own patient gown, the grey cloth draped around him like a belted blanket, Ben knows better than to touch Rey, just yet, and so he stands awkwardly over her medbay bed, his size almost comical in the tiny room. He can't bring himself to look directly at her face, so his eyes settle on the IVs running precious nutrients to her, and on her arms, and their silvery scars.

"Ben."

It takes him a moment to react to the word, to that name being his again. When he understands that the Doctor is using it to address him, he visibly winces as if waiting for some lightning bolt to strike. He swallows it down and her name, her given name, comes out of him before he can stop it.

"Harter."

For a moment, they both puff up, and there is a feeling like there may be a contentious mission report or some formal posturing on the part of these two, as they stand tall against each other, but Ben's eyes, they can't leave Rey, and slowly, he begins to deflate as his eyes trace the hardware keeping her alive.

"Can we have the room?" Kalonia asks, and while her eyes don't leave Ben, everyone knows that her question is not directed at him.

Finn nods, and ascends, his hand still in Rose's, but she digs her heels in.

"You'll be here, the entire time?" Rose's voice is hard, fierce like she can be when it comes to those she loves.

Kalonia cocks her head to the side and knits her eyebrows, her eyes darting to Rose's face.

"You can't...don't leave her alone with…" Rose looks between Kalonia and Ben, but Kalonia doesn't respond, nothing in her expression gives, and Finn shuffles Rose out.

And then it is just the two of them.

"I haven't had a chance to formally discharge you. If you would like, I can perform the exit evaluation now," and it's as if nothing is wrong, the tension drained so suddenly from the room it is almost disorienting, as if Kalonia is simply a doctor and Ben her patient, and that's all there is to it.

Ben nods once, his fingers just daring to graze Rey's arm, his eyes still on her form.

"We don't have to go far," Kalonia reassures him, sensing his need to be close, as she pulls a chair from the corner of the room, positioning it next to the bed so Ben can sit.

Ben deliberates internally, as Kalonia runs through the diagnostics, on what he should say, could say, to this woman. He wonders as she checks his heart with her stethoscope, if he could just open his mouth, and ask her about his men. He wonders, as her light checks his pupils for constriction, if he could ask her how she is doing, after what he is sure were the horrors of the last twelve hours, if that would even be appropriate, seeing as how he was the major cause of those horrors. Once, while she takes a blood sample, running it through a floating med-droid to check for abnormalities, he opens his mouth, just to see what it would be like, if words were to come out of him.

But nothing does.

"Lift your shirt," it's Kalonia who breaks the silence, because of course it is. And he complies, noiselessly.

Kalonia's fingers, red and raw from how much she has washed them to avoid cross contamination, palpate his side, the same side which, not half a day earlier, had a huge, gaping hole pouring blood.

The skin there is purpled and warm, but there is no scar, no wound, nothing that would suggest a fatal wound ever touched the skin there.

Kalonia presses into it, feeling for breaks or fissures, and finds none.

"How does that feel?"

"Sore."

Kalonia straightens her spine and nods curtly.

"I don't think bacta will help much more, it's yellowing along the edges, which means your white blood cells are doing what they need to already."

Ben nods and pulls his shirt back down. Kalonia gives her back to him, charting her findings on a datapad, and Ben, again, opens his mouth, but, still, no words seem right.

Next to him, Rey takes a deeper breath, her breath sighing out of her, and he turns to look, but she is still unconscious, her face content and warm. His depth of field drops away until it is just Rey, everything else out of focus, as he stares at her. Situationally, his awareness goes down to almost zero when he looks at her, and so, when Kalonia positions herself on the other side of Rey's bed, he doesn't notice until she speaks.

"Do you want to tell me what happened back there on your ship?"

He opens his mouth, then closes it, looking at Rey as her body moves slightly with slow breath.

"You were...the amount of blood you lost, it was...it was too much blood to survive, even with the most advanced medicine. Even if I had everything I needed for a transfusion right there, it still wouldn't have been enough. Your brain, it should be dead, there wouldn't have been enough blood in you to get any oxygen to it."

She pauses and purses her lips, seeing Ben not responding, "I know it was Rey, I know it was something she did, and if you can tell me, I might be able to figure out how to wake her up."

Ben shakes his head now, "All she needs is time."

"What do you mean by that?" Kalonia's question is severe as it leaves her. There is always care in her voice, but now there is also an edge to it, like a protectress jumping in front of her young.

Ben takes a while to respond, unpracticed in how to speak to people. Kalonia, she could mistake his silence for impudence or arrogance, but she doesn't, she just waits.

"What she did, to save me," he looks up from Rey to find Kalonia intently staring, waiting, "The ancient Jedi, they called it the laying on of hands. As far as I know, it has only ever been done by masters because of how dangerous it can be, and only done very consciously. Rey, though," he turns his attention back to her, "She doesn't even realize when she does it, the force, it flows through her so completely, so effortlessly, that she doesn't even realize."

"Laying on of hands?"

Ben nods, "Force healing, is how most refer to it."

"Force healing," Kalonia repeats, as if trying to make sense of it in her mouth.

"I think there's just more it needs to show her, before she comes back."

Kalonia's face tilts to the side in confusion, but before she can open her mouth the question, another voice booms into the room.

"Kriff, there you are," and then Poe is suddenly there, his steps falling in the steady tempo of a march before he roughly grabs Kylo's shoulder and tugs, "Stand up. You can't be here."

"Poe," Kalonia's voice is soft over the stern pitch of the General.

"No, Kalonia, it's not safe for anyone, least of all _him_. If someone sees him here, if someone recognizes him, all hell will break loose and I can't control what happens."

Kalonia's posture stays straight in defiance, but the rest of her acquiesces, "I'm discharging him. I need the beds. Find somewhere for him that isn't a supply closet."

Poe takes his opportunity, making his voice as firm as possible to give an order to the former Kylo Ren, "Stand…"

But then, Ben is standing, and Poe is looking up, and up, at him.

"What did Leia feed you?" Poe questions, and they both are taken aback at how easily it comes out of Poe's mouth, how easy it is to link Ben to Leia. A day ago, he was Supreme Leader of the Galaxy, and now, already, Poe is referring to him as something akin to human.

"Let's go, keep your head down," his grip tightens, until he is like a vice around half of Ben's bicep, as if causing Ben discomfort would be some revenge for his own verbal slip up.

Poe starts leading Ben out of the room, but before they can make it out completely, Ben pauses, looking back at Kalonia.

"She will."

"Hm?" the Doctor pauses, her eyes move from reading Rey's monitor to Ben.

"She will wake up. Just give her time."

Kalonia nods, and Poe leads him forward, out of medbay.

* * *

They walk for a long while, down the quiet corridors of the _Solace_. Poe forces Ben's head down, but there is no use, as the only beings they encounter are MSE-6 droids zooming in and out of their holes in the wall, and one particularly drunk reveller, passed out in the hallway in front of his room, who Poe helps fully into bed, a slight detour on the way to what Ben assumes is his prison cell.

The ship is practically empty, everyone either helping in the medbay or sleeping off the initial celebrations of their victory.

They walk past the recovery quarters, past empty private rooms, past disused closets and conference rooms, all of which could be quietly converted into prison quarters, off to the side and hidden from the masses.

Ben glances at Poe every so often, confused, but Poe marches resolutely forward.

Then, they are in the dock, passing perfectly acceptable, perfectly cordoned off ships that the Resistance could hole him up in before execution.

Until finally, they stop. Ben's eyes look up, and in front of him is a YT-1300 Corellian light freighter, docked in the bay.

"No," Ben stops suddenly, jerking Poe back with him, "No, I'm not getting on that ship." It was a promise he made himself, long ago, to never set foot back in the _Falcon_ , ever.

Poe looks up at him, his face widening into a large, malevolent grin, "Yes, you are, and I know just the room for you."

* * *

Ben can see her when he dreams.

It's hard, the first week, to sleep in his parents' old room, to deal with the ghosts of that place. To be enclosed in the walls of his quietly desperate childhood again.

And so, for a while, sleep does not come in anything but fits, hazy and quick, so quick that he is continually unsure if he actually slept at all. He has made camp on the ground, unable to stomach sleeping where they slept, unable to touch the foundation of those memories. Once in a while, he finds himself unconsciously staring at the bed in the boredom of his solitude, and the ghost of him, little, so little, sneaking in on lazy mornings, crawling between his mom and dad, interrupting their sleep, slides in to his conscious brain. The happy memories, they always sting the most, because his parents, they would never kick him out, ever. Sometimes Little Ben would tell them bad jokes punctuated with awful puns, and his parents would laugh. Sometimes they would just sing songs that he learned in nursery school, about parading ewoks and convorees stuck in rainstorms. There is a love in that room that is too deep to understand, and so mostly Ben just cries, imprisoned with those memories, waiting for Rey or waiting for death, he doesn't truly know.

But it is Rey who comes first.

He sees her, fuzzy and shrouded in the white of his subconscious, and his bones settle, after days of unrest. She is there, in his dreams, and suddenly, sleep becomes much easier. Sleep becomes _everything._

He is a spectator, and a spectre, to Rey's training there. They can't see him, he's just a revenant in the periphery, and sometimes, it feels wrong, like an intrusion between master and student, but that's not what they are, not truly.

It is odd, seeing Obi Wan, the legend, though he never acknowledges Ben's presence in any tangible way.

Sometimes, old Ben appears not so old, reddish beard, brown robes, whimsy in his smile.

And sometimes, old Ben is very old, the force conjuring up a cane for him to hit Rey with if her form is lazy, but no matter what form he appears in, there is the same twinkle of something in his eyes.

And Rey, she is fighting, and laughing, and fury, and content. There is emotion from her that Obi Wan isn't stifling or pushing down. There is no code there, no misinterpretations of the force, no organized religion getting in the way.

It is as it should be, as it should have been, some sixty years prior.

Any of them could have been the chosen one, if they just had support. All of them w _ere_ the chosen ones, Anakin and Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Ben Solo, they all were chosen. They all led to Rey.

But it was only her, in all her resilience and defiance, she was the one who sought what none of the rest of them truly did: connection. That's all she ever wanted, to belong, and to be belonged to. Like the force itself, flowing through everything, life and death, birth and decay, she didn't turn or run from any of it.

And now, after all this time, the force has corrected itself. It has redeemed the sins of the master, and created something, someone, who knows the pain of the darkside is not something to fight or to succumb to, but something that is necessary to endure, to sit with, to struggle in.

And now she knows, too, the mysteries unlocked to her by the force itself, through Obi Wan. She is the who will bring balance to the force.

* * *

Poe and Finn visit everyday after Rey is moved into a larger room, with more patients, her condition too stable after two weeks to warrant a private one anymore. They each come with a bouquet a day, from the worlds they dock on, helping to rebuild. On this day, it is Artorias, a small, peace-loving planet decimated by the First Order, they are coming from, their competing flower arrangements vivid against the dull grey of the _Solace_.

Finn strolls up beside Poe, who is primping and fluffing his arrangement in pride.

"Oh, I have you so beat today, old man," Finn presents his bouquet, formed with wildflowers, the same type Rey liked to keep pressed in the Jedi texts from the worlds they visited during the war.

"About time, your flowers have been looking scraggly this whole time." Poe replies, his smile roguish.

"How dare you," Finn's mock outrage is met with Poe's broadening smile, as they walk into the medbay.

It is Poe's smile which goes first, dropping into something bewildered first. He has a more direct line of sight to Rey, and when Finn tilts his head to ask Poe about something inconsequential, and is met with Poe's face in full on shock, Finn panics. Sirens start blaring in his head for Rey, and he has to force himself to look forward towards her bed, fearing the absolute worst has happened to his best friend.

It is then he sees it. Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, is at Rey's bedside, her hand in his.

It's as if Poe and Finn can hear each other's hearts beating, sure and fast in the busy room. Poe's face flushes red, with the former Supreme Leader just sitting out in the open, after these weeks of keeping him hidden for good reason.

In the week immediately following the fall of the First Order, the galaxy was war weary. They were so glad to be done with it, so glad to revel in the celebrations of freedom that rang out throughout the galaxy, so glad to be able to finally allow happiness back into their lives, that they forgot to care about the little details, about how it truly happened. But now, questions were slowly starting to form at the edges, and Poe, he knows he only has a limited amount of time before it crashes down. Ben Solo seems to have a goal to speed up that timeline.

Poe puffs up, incredulous, the flowers falling listlessly to his side, all his fluffing for naught. His breathing picks up and his face scrunches into a scowl, all the anger bubbling in him, about to be unleashed in a furious whirlwind.

Kalonia notices the impending maelstrom from across the room and starts walking calmly toward Finn and Poe, just as Poe starts forward, lunging really, towards Ben and Rey.

It is Finn, though, that grabs Poe first, spitting at him in a whisper to stop. Kalonia, only a few steps away now, eyes them. She glances to Finn and he nods, all the confirmation she needs to turn back around and start helping her patients again. Finn has this one.

"Wait," Finn whispers harshly, and Poe, Poe looks like he could murder everyone, but he listens.

"Why?" the question comes from the side of Poe's mouth, and he is almost shaking now, trying to keep his voice and himself under control.

Finn softens, "Look," Finn motions to the medbay, buzzing with patients talking, med droids chirping, with families and friends visiting. The only thing out of the ordinary is them, two grown men whisper yelling at each other.

"What?!" Poe's patience is wearing thin for this game.

"No, _look,_ " Finn's voice is sure and strong, quietly ordering his General to open his eyes.

So Poe does look. Really look. No one is screaming, no one is threatening Ben's life, no one is throwing medical supplies. No one notices him there, sitting next to Rey, his eyes only on her, not even noticing them yet. He is just another person, waiting for his loved one to wake. He isn't Kylo Ren, monster in a mask. He is Ben Solo. And no one knows who Ben Solo is, not anymore.

Poe turns around to Finn with his mouth open.

"They don't know. How do they not know?" The fact that Ben Solo was Kylo Ren was such old news to them, that they didn't consider that it was actually a heavily veiled secret to the Galaxy.

Finn's face is radiating hope so brightly it settles into Poe's cheeks too, and then they are smiling at each other, like idiots.

"We might get to keep her."

* * *

You are all amazing and I perpetually feel like shit for how long it takes me to post. Originally this was going to be the end, but then I was at 10,000 words and super overwhelmed so I broke it into two parts (and we still have an epilogue! so I upped the chapter count by one).

Thank you all so much for your patience and continuing to read. The angst is almost over, I promise. The HEA-Happily ever after? Hot, Explicit Action?-I'm not sure what that acronym stands for, but they both are coming SOON.


	24. Chapter 24

CW: Talk of reproduction and damaged reproductive organs.

* * *

The next day Finn finds himself on the _Falcon_.

He doesn't quite understand how he gets there. He kisses Rose goodbye after breakfast, fully expecting to walk towards medbay to get ready to conduct a group session with the injured Stormtroopers or to keep Kalonia from work by asking her a thousand questions about Rey or even to bother Poe on the bridge for a bit. But he doesn't do any of those things.

Because instead of any of those perfectly sane things, Finn finds himself standing in front of _his_ door, which used to be Poe's door, which used to be Leia's door, which used to be Han's door.

Stepping onto the Falcon feels different, foreign, even though it has only been a few weeks since he and Rose packed their things, moving in together on the flagship to be closer if they were needed.

Somehow, it feels like the first time he ever stepped foot on it, hot on Rey's heels. The cylinders of arching hallways are all dim, winding to the outline of an ill-formed, hazy plan, with a very low likelihood of success, the same way they had that day on Jakku all those years ago.

And yet, he needs to try, needs to swallow down his own fear and his own feelings, the same way Rey has these last few years. He needs to try, like he did then, for her.

Shifting on his feet, he hesitates, before raising his hand and knocking.

There is some fumbling on the other side, rousing the occupant from their sleep. When the door hisses open, Ben Solo stares blankly, almost dumbly at Finn, before his eyes go wide. He swallows, hard, his Adam's apple bobbing, as he sets his eyes more narrowly, all emotion draining from his face.

Finn's eyebrows knit, for a split second, before he too is able to even out his features. Finn nods his head back towards the exit, a silent entreaty.

And it seems as if Ben understands the mimed command. He solemnly nods, and Finn pivots on his heels, heading back the way he came. They descend off the ramp, Finn giving C'ai and Pava, the newly entrusted guards of the _Falcon_ for the morning shift, a knowing nod. There are no words as they walk through the expanse of the hangar _,_ just the uneasy shifting of Ben Solo, the sound of his feet falling heavy behind Finn the only indication he is following.

Finn leads him through the hallways of the _Solace,_ Resistance members lazing by them, bounding for different parts of the ship, with no deference paid to Ben at all.

It must be different, certainly, for the former Supreme Leader to not have full hallways turn at attention at the sight of him, Finn realizes. Even before his ascension, Finn remembers how seeing Kylo Ren in the hallways of the _Finalizer_ would cause him and his former Stormtrooper brethren to seize up, buttholes clenching and breaths hitching, even at just the hint of wafture from his cloak.

Finn's stream of memories are dammed up, pooling to a halt as he sneaks a peek behind him to see Ben, whose face is determined, but underlain with a terror that's hard to place.

An errant thought enters Finn's consciousness, whirling in the pool of his thoughts, that Ben looks like he is on his way to die.

Finn had seen death marches before. When First Order personnel stepped out of line, they would be marched through the halls of the ships, and everyone knew, including those marching, that they were walking towards their own untimely deaths for crimes against their dearly beloved tyrants.

Ben, with his careful placement, his deadened eyes, mirrored the same face as those Finn had seen marching years earlier: a resolute facade masking the fear of the unknown.

 _Oh._

Oh.

Ben Solo thinks this is a death march.

Finn nearly trips over himself when the realization washes over him. He knows he should say something, maybe keep it casual like, "Hey bud, you're not on your way to getting your head blown off by a Resistance firing squad, so loosen up a little, will ya?"

But, then, he remembers who this is, what he has done. What harm could there be in letting him squirm a little?

Maybe he had been spending too much time with Poe.

Ben slows as they approach medbay. Finn turns and looks at him, fully, for the first time since the _Falcon_ , tipping his head to the door which Rey lays behind.

Their eyes meet and Finn's stomach immediately drops. There is a haunting, deep sadness there, in Solo's eyes, that freezes Finn to his spot. If Finn had lived a better life, if Finn had never been stripped of his humanity and brainwashed to believe violence was all there was, it might have been the first time he saw a pain that resonated in his marrow. He hadn't lived a better life, and so a look like that, it wasn't new to him. But seeing a pain like that, even from a mortal enemy, still eviscerated his soul, letting him know that he could still live a better life, that some part of him wasn't dead like the rest of them.

Finn opens his mouth to tell him that he had just brought him here to see Rey, that he was going to bring him back to the _Falcon_ right after this, that he wasn't playing some eternally cruel joke on him by allowing him to see the woman he loves before sending him to a firing squad, but before any of it can leave his lips, Ben has blown past him, and is kneeling at Rey's side, his face pressed into her hands, slack on the hospital bed.

Finn's body has short circuited, he keeps opening and closing his mouth, raising and dropping his hand. He should have told him, should have said something right away, because now he can't, now he is stuck in this loop in his head as his mouth grows drier and drier.

His eyes shoot to Ben, who is whispering something in Rey's ear. Finn's too far away to hear, but it comes off an an evocation, a silent prayer, his lips brushing against the skin of Rey's arms. It's then he realizes Ben is shaking. Finn has seen Kylo Ren shake many times in rage, in fury, but never, ever like this. Never in fear and pain and loss. Bile rises up in Finn's stomach, a deep regret, a deep sorrow for this man who had caused so much pain. He knows it is counterintuitive, but seeing them there, together, his best friend being so loved, it erodes his resolve to hate this man.

Finn unfreezes, taking a step forward, reaching his hand out, but before he can do or say anything, it's over, almost as if Ben has flipped a switch, has turned off a part of himself he just got back. Ben stands, quickly, before turning an about face on his heels and walking out of the room, not daring to look back at Rey on the bed. He nods to Finn before stopping, waiting for Finn to lead the way again, and it then Finn sees the tears, unabashed on Ben's face, welling in his eyes.

Finn stares up at Ben, his mouth open, his eyes searching, but then, all he can do is turn around and start forward, his eyes huge. His body runs on autopilot and Ben's steps are lighter, more accepting, as Finn leads him back.

They take the exact same path in reverse, Finn picking up his pace, wanting this to be over, for both of them, needing Ben to be back on the _Falcon_ , to understand because words are not enough right now.

Finally, they near the ramp of the _Falcon_ and Finn hears Ben's steps slow behind him, their tempo turning from set and resolute to uneven and unsure.

Finn turns back to Ben when he reaches the entry ramp, and motions for Ben to walk up. Ben's eyes are huge, confused, darting between Finn and the ramp, looking for the trap. His mouth parts before it seems like he realizes. Snapping his jaw shut, he sets it and nods again, swallowing back some sort of emotion as he breezes past Finn up the ramp.

Finn can feel Ben turn around when he reaches the top of the ramp, but can't look up at him, his guilt too raw to accept whatever Ben was offering. Instead, he turns and walks the other direction, stinging with shame.

Despite his feeling of malpractice, Finn still finds himself there the next day, and the next, and the one after that.

Rose and Poe don't understand, but they stay out of it, for the most part. Part of Finn doesn't even understand, not really. He tries to rationalize it, telling himself Rey would do the same if someone was trying to prevent him from seeing an injured Rose. He tells himself it's better, somehow, that he's supervising, that he's allowing Ben permission to see her. It's an illusion of control, of course, Finn knows this, knows Ben could overpower all of them, could trick all of them with just the glide of his hand, but the illusion makes him feel better nonetheless.

Everyday is the same, for the first week, with Finn knocking on the door early, waking Ben from his slumber. Their only communication comes in the form of head nods and grunts, which, past Ben's initial misunderstanding, is enough to relay all the information they need to.

Ben's face remains impassive towards Finn, but that all fades when he enters the room with Rey, something that does not go unnoticed.

The first few days, Finn only allows a few minutes, his own anxieties eating at him. He is gruff and overprotective, looming over them, cataloging every movement, as if preparing to strike if Ben should move in a way he does not like. But Ben never does that, of course, he just sits, staring at Rey like Finn isn't there, his thumb running smooth circles into the pliant flesh of her hand.

On the fifth day, he is distracted by a question asked to him by a former trooper, who had lost multiple limbs in the battle, and was now healing in a bed near Rey's. They talked for a few minutes, Finn losing himself in the conversation, wanting the fallen soldier to feel heard.

When Finn remembered his self-imposed mission of babysitting Ben's interactions with Rey, his head snapped back to them, and he saw them in exactly the same position. Nothing had happened. Ben hadn't stolen her away, hadn't disappeared into the ether with her, he was still there, still staring at her just as devotedly as before.

As the days progress, Finn starts moving further and further away, allowing Ben a wider and wider berth to be alone with Rey. Instead of walking Ben back to the _Falcon_ before he begins his workday, he eventually starts letting Ben stay as he conducts group sessions with the former Stormtroopers. Rey and Ben are always in his eyeline, but Finn begins to slowly give up more trust, the seconds between his watchful, parental glances towards them becoming minutes, then tens of minutes, then hours, a workday gone by, with Ben still sitting by Rey's side every time Finn checks.

When time stretches on, and the days of her coma turn into weeks, care has to be taken to prevent her body from atrophying in disuse, and Ben helps, bending her arms and pushing her knees up to keep the muscles in use. Her eyelids are now taped shut to prevent her eyes from drying out when they eke open from her rapid eye movements. Ben rubs lotion into her skin, shifts her body to prevent sores and bathes her all under Kalonia's supervision.

Finn fights down the part of him that wants Ben's hands off of her, remembering her voice on the comms the day the First Order fell. He could feel her love then, and now, when he looks at Ben being so doting and complete in his care of her, he can see that love from him, too.

Half of his heart is terrified and half is elated. Rey deserves, has always deserved, someone that loves her fully, without conditions. But he never expected the person who would love her like that to be Kylo Ren. He never thought someone like Kylo Ren to be capable of a millionth of the love Finn sees flowing out of him now everytime he sees Rey.

He watches Ben's eyes, full of awe and hope and happiness, set into the rest of his cold face, which reads none of those emotions when he is not in her presence. Ben sometimes whispers to her sleeping form, when he thinks no one is looking. Finn, he never inquires further, never edges closer to hear the words, but he knows, he knows what those words entail, he knows because he whispers the same words, he is sure, into Rose's ears, pouring everything he can't say to anyone else into her.

After a few weeks of watching, Finn changes the ritual by showing up to Ben's door with a mug of caff, handing it to Ben as he rubs the sleep off his face. This is first met with the slight uptick of an eyebrow and an intense glare on Ben's part, but eventually, he takes it, nursing it as they make the journey to Rey. From then on, Finn brews extra caff for Ben every morning, eliciting only the slightest side eye from Rose when she notices.

On the forty-third day of this, as Finn steps into the dock on his way to the _Falcon_ , his routine is changed by the beeping of his communicator.

He turns to silence it, but Rose's name lights it. Rose almost never calls without reason. His stomach jumps into his throat as he presses the switch to talk.

"Rose?" his voice is unsure and he's not sure why.

"She's awake, Finn. She's awake."

And with Rose's elation still filling his ears, there is a click, and Rose is gone, likely too excited by the promise of speaking to Rey to stay on the line.

That same elation that was in her voice fills Finn's soul, and he turns back to the medbay, wanting to run, wanting to sprint to get to Rey and Rose, but something stops him, gluing him to the floor below.

If _he_ knows, whatever it is that ties Ben to Rey will soon also know. And there is so much that needs to be said before that happens.

It's now or never.

Finn turns, and continues his original trajectory towards the _Falcon_ , leaving Rey behind him.

* * *

"It was Chewie, in the end."

Tears prickle at the edges of Rey's eyes, "Of course it was," she wipes the first falling tears, but then her nose goes, and it's a mess, and Rose is holding her, crying too.

Rose pulls away first, smoothing out Rey's bedhead, trying to calm herself. It had been so much longer for Rose, she had more time to deal with the pain, but for Rey, that pain was brand new and blaring.

Rose had been the one with her when she awoke. During Rose's routine, daily, early morning visit to Rey before she herself headed to her new venture training in engineering, the routine had changed, Rey's eyes fluttering open just as Rose arrived, and then there was yelling and hugging and tears.

Everything was peace, around Rey, through her, despite the outward chaos of her waking. Her heart didn't even pick up because she knew, had known, for the entire time she had been steeped in the force, she had known that they were okay, that _he_ was okay, and when she woke, it was like a warm blanket cocooned her, and she didn't shout out for him, because she already knew.

Ben, as it turned out, was asleep when she awoke and she was careful not to jostle in the force to wake him. His exhaustion radiated and something in her just wanted him to rest, to be peaceful. All she ever wanted for him, really, once she accepted her own feelings, was his peace, and she would allow him a little more before what would surely be an eventful day for both of them.

Everything, the rest of it, the rest of their lives, there was time for that. For the first time she actually felt that there was _time_ for it. No matter what happened, she knew now she was strong enough to protect him, no matter what, no matter where they had to go, how far they had to run, she could protect him with what she had learned from Obi-Wan.

They could rewrite everything, together. But now, before the beautiful chaos of reuniting with everyone, she just needs time to understand what happened that day she fell and Rose is more than happy to explain, talking a mile a minute about the final moments of the _Discord._

Kalonia walks in silently behind Rose as she talks Rey through it all. Rey reaches out to Kalonia silently, grabbing her hand and squeezing with a small smile as Rose explains everything about that day, which is a memory to her now, but still such a fresh hell to Rey.

Time, in the force plane, it was years and minutes at the same time. Time stretched and contracted under Old Ben's tutelage.

When Rose notices Kalonia, she moves to stop, but Kalonia gives her a small head shake, allowing Rose to continue talking, as Kalonia starts to run quiet diagnostics around them, nodding confirmation at Rose's story when Rey looks on the edge of disbelief.

And when she is done, when their tears are drying on their faces and Rey has stopped hiccuping for air, Rose has a weird look on her face.

"Kylo…" Rose breathes in deeply as she sees Rey blink at the name, "Ben, whatever we're calling him now, I just, I know he saved us, but I don't think...I can't…I can't _forgive_ him like they can."

"I know. I would never ask you to."

"But, I would, Rey, I would if it meant I didn't lose you."

"It's...what do you mean?"

It is at that moment Kalonia steps in from the periphery, datapad in hands, "I'm sorry, but I need some time with my patient."

Rose nods at the Doctor, then looks back at Rey, "We'll talk later."

"Rose, wait."

"Later, you need to see the Doctor now."

Rose leaves, the hydraulic door clicking on the way out, and Rey just stares at the grey durasteel, Kalonia moving in her periphery.

It takes her a few seconds to will her neck to turn, to look at Kalonia, and when she does, she feels her cheeks go pink, immediately feeling like a foolish little girl in her presence. She had never gone back to Kalonia after Mustafar, never gotten enough courage to face her again. And the last time she had seen her, they were both covered in Ben's blood. Everything was too much to process, and so Rey stays silent, waiting.

Kalonia, to her great credit, doesn't say anything at first. Just writes on the data pad. When she does talk, it's only to ask Rey innocuous questions; she asks her to move, to grip, to blink and to swallow. They walk, Rey dragging an IV behind her, and Kalonia's hand out to steady her, if needed, which it isn't.

After what seems like forever, Kalonia seems satisfied, and starts to unhook Rey from the machines which had been feeding her intravenously, before giving handing her a vegmeat packet.

Rey winces at her old staple of subsistence, taking it cautiously before gently setting it in her lap, "Oh, no thank you, I'm not very hungry."

Kalonia laughs at that, "Rey, you've been in a coma for eight weeks. You're definitely hungry."

Rey's face drops, "Eight weeks?!"

Kalonia hands her a water to activate it, "Eight weeks," Kalonia's voice is soft against Rey's disbelief, "Sorry, but we're all out of everything else, there were a lot of injured that evaporated our supplies, and I need to make sure you can go through the process of chewing, swallowing, and digestion."

"Where's everyone now?" Rey asks, as she looks around the mostly empty medbay, now only populated by a few dire cases and some food poisoning patients, "Tallie, Snap," Rey reaches out in the force, trying to locate her friends, gasping and tensing at who she does not find, "Kaydel?"

"Home," Kalonia says simply, assuaging her fear, "The war is over. We've been docking on planets, helping them with supplies and emergency aid, and bringing people back to their families. They're home, some of the first to go. They didn't want to go without saying goodbye, but it's not really goodbye. You'll see them again. They promised."

Rey's body relaxes as she nods. Her fear at having lost them permanently turns more into a dull ache; she had missed the end then, what they had all fought so hard for. Now it was over. That new dawn that Poe had spoken of all those months ago had already risen without her.

Kalonia fills in the silence, "Chewie, he was the only one we lost. Everyone else is okay because of his sacrifice, and because of Ben."

"Ben," Rey says softly, trying out his name once again, after years of disuse.

"Yeah, Ben," Kalonia smiles, "After-after what happened, after he regained his consciousness and you lost yours, he was able to convince the Troopers to leave without resistance, once we tore him away from you. We got out just in time to see the _Discord_ disintegrate behind us."

Rey is stuck in her head, unable to say anything back, imagining that behemoth of a ship slipping into the hazy atmosphere of some planet, rocketing hard into its surface, littering its final destruction. She imagines a little girl, decades from now, scavenging through it, finding the remnants of Kylo Ren, of the First Order, and not understanding the magnitude of it all, the magnitude of war, of death. It was all circles, everything cyclical, and now it was up to her, to _them_ to try to straighten that circle, to make history a straight line of progress instead of having it fold into itself again, like it had so many times before.

"I mean, C'ai did hit his head on a malfunctioning transport ramp coming back and needed stitches, but that was the most injury The Resistance had in the great final battle."

"And the First Order?"

"They're gone. The only parts of it that remain are former Stormtroopers. We managed to get a little more than a hundred."

"A hundred?" Rey's voice juts out of her, in disbelief, "Out of?"

"Thousands, I think. Maybe tens of thousands."

Rey's lids fall heavy, stinging over her prickling eyes. A hundred. That was so little, objectively, empirically. So many lost their lives for a cause they never understood or asked to be a part of. She fights the anger and sadness, because a hundred souls, each one with the capacity for so much, that was still a victory, that was still worth the risk. Even one would have been worth it to Rey.

"They wanted to stay, even though they were decimated. They wanted to go down with their ship. Ben convinced them to move. But the battle had pit them against one another. They're a rare breed now. Finn, he has been helping to rehabilitate them, sharing his experiences with entry into a world without the First Order-"

Rey's body shoots up, "Finn-I need to-"

Kalonia gently places her hand on the young force user's shoulder, "Finn is fine, Finn will be there, I promise. But now you need to eat."

Rey does eat, ravenously, while Kalonia writes more on her pad, perching herself on the edge of the bed as she does.

Kalonia starts to talk before Rey is done eating, "Everything is normal. Your blood tests are all normal. Everything has been normal this whole time. Your brain activity, your muscles, all normal, and apart from a few lingering bruises, you're a healthy, 22 year old female."

"I've just been mysteriously sleeping for eight weeks," Rey deadpans.

"Right," Kalonia retorts. "I should say I need to keep you under observation for the night, but I have a feeling that there's not much I can do to keep you in this bed."

Kalonia smiles as she rises, grabbing Rey's regular clothes from a nearby drawer and laying them on the bed in front of her. Rey's eyebrow quirks, not expecting to be let go so quickly, but when Kalonia turns around, Rey jumps at the chance, shrugging off the hospital gown and easing into her own clothes.

"I want to see you back here tomorrow. If I don't I will drag you personally from your quarters. I need to keep an eye you."

Rey nods as she stands on slightly wobbling legs, she moves to the door, to her friends, to Ben.

"There is one more thing…"

Rey swallows and turns around at Kalonia's voice.

"Why did you never come and see me Rey?"

Her jaw goes slack, dropping only slightly before she pick it up again.

"I-I'm sorry, I was just…"

Kalonia hands Rey a datapad that looks broken, a grey and black image plastered on its screen.

"What am I looking at?" Rey's voice is timid, shaking at the sight of the wavy picture in front of her.

"I wish you would have come to see me. You're looking at an ultrasound of your uterus that I took a few weeks ago, while you were asleep here, recovering after the _Discord_."

Rey grimaces.

Kalonia swipes the screen to another image, of the same thing, but with more light grey on the screen, "This is what it looked like at your last check up a few months ago."

Rey's eyebrows knit, toggling between the two monochromatic images, "I don't understand."

"That's the thing, Rey. I don't understand either," she points to the light grey blooms on the image, "This is scar tissue. It used to coat the entire left side of your womb from your injury." Kalonia switches back to the new ultrasound, the screen darkening, "It's reduced by over 50% now."

Rey's head swivels to look at Kalonia, her eyes hardened, "But you said-"

"It would never get better. I know. There's no way it should have gotten better. There's no medicine or surgery that could have done this, I would have talked to you about them, we would have tried them, if you wanted."

"Then what could have…?"

"I think it's outside the purview of medicine. I think it is much more in your wheelhouse."

"My wheelhouse?"

"Jedi tricks," Kalonia says with a smirk.

Rey pauses for a moment, replaying that night's events in her mind. That white, hot energy that she thought was going to burn her from the inside out, which settled deep into her stomach before everything went blank comes back to her, before all she can hear is the echo of Ben's voice in her head.

 _You don't even realize, do you?_

Rey edges back onto the hospital bed she was so eager to leave only a few moments earlier. She sits silently and Kalonia lets her, as she collects her thoughts, only noticing her mouth is gaped open after it becomes too dry to swallow.

There are too many thoughts in her, each more startling than the last, building to something she can't face, that maybe-maybe-

"There's still quite a bit of scar tissue enveloping your fallopian tubes," Kalonia points to white globs dotting the top of the holopad, "which means your menstrual cycle can't return. And that pregnancy is still impossible."

And with that, all those building thoughts are pushed away, back where they belong, in the dark recesses of the part of her mind. She locks them all away again and rebuilds the wall around them. Rey stares forward, not daring to look at Kalonia. Her breath feels stuck in her throat.

Rey finally huffs out a breath, and she is not sure what emotion comes out with it. Is it relief? Or sadness? How could it be sadness? Sadness for something she had never wanted anyway?

"Rey, the blood, that I saw that day after Mustafar, it wasn't from your menses, was it?"

"No."

Kalonia runs her hands through the young woman's hair.

"Was Ky-Ben." She stops and starts over again, "Was Ben your first sexual partner?"

Rey nods, sucking her lips inward to wet them, to do something to prevent the heaviness threatening to fall from her eyes.

Kalonia nods back, her face so soft and open, before remembering herself, her role, "Sometimes, bleeding is normal, the first few times. It won't always bleed, or hurt. It _shouldn't_ bleed or hurt, you should know. I'm not sure how your injury will impact intercourse, so if there is anymore bleeding, or pain, let me know, and we'll see what options we have available."

Kalonia moves, like she's finally going to let Rey go but stops, and instead, turns around, "I know there wasn't much, on Jakku, if any doctors, and I know-with Leia, you would sometimes confide-" she pauses, as if the next bit is something difficult to process, "I just want you know, if you have any questions, about anything, even things that are non-medical, please come to me. I'd like to think by now we have a little deeper of a relationship than just doctor and patient, after everything."

This breaks Rey out of her own mind, hearing Kalonia so earnest in front of her, and a genuine smile blooms across Rey's face as she blinks back her tears before any can escape her. Her hand moves to Kalonia's and she squeezes, "Of course, of course we do, of course I will."

Kalonia looks down, swallowing.

"There are a lot of people who want to see you, and I know you want to see them too, but-" Kalonia drifts, briefly, before getting back on track, "I can keep them off your trail for a little longer."

Rey's head quirks to the side.

"The have him holed up on the _Falcon_. I'm sure it would be easy for you to slip by unnoticed." Kalonia waves her hand as she says this, miming a Jedi's mind trick before she smiles. "Go meet Ben Solo."

* * *

"She's awake," Ben doesn't have to ask, he knows, even in his groggy state, he can feel her in the medbay, being checked out, her signature rosy in his grey world. He is up to his feet in an instant, faster than Finn has ever seen him get out of bed, and pulling on a shirt in seconds.

Finn nods calmly in the face of Ben's feverish actions, leaning against his door, blocking Ben's path out, "She's awake. But there are some questions I need to ask you first."

Ben stills, his eyes narrowing at Finn, "What's stopping me from blowing through you to get to her?"

"I don't know, what is?"

Ben pauses, before huffing out a breath, and sitting back down on the bed.

"What do you want FN?" it is he most words he has strung together in these last few weeks of chaperoning, and it's not lost on either of them that Finn's name comes out harsh on his lips.

Finn rolls his eyes and drags a chair from the corner up closer to the bed where Ben sits. He had been rehearsing this, practicing what he would say in front of Poe and Rose, in front of mirrors, in front of a very confused BB-8, gaining the courage to say what he is about to say.

"I need to know about the mask."

"The mask?" Ben looks up from the floor, confusion flitting across his features.

Finn sighs, motioning to his own face, "Yeah, you know, big, black, scary. The mask."

Ben sits back on his bed, his eyes becoming a sort of incredulous challenge, like he can't believe this is where the conversation that is keeping him from Rey is starting, "The mask."

Finn closes his eyes, clearly stamping down frustration, "Good, I'm glad we're clear now on literally the only mask that we could be talking about." He breathes in, steadying himself, before continuing, "When did you wear the mask?"

"The mask..."

"Kriffing-"

Ben steps over Finn's irritation, "Whenever I stepped foot off a First Order ship. It was mandated to cover-"

"The scar."

"Yes, that. It ensured we were able to keep the fact that an untrained girl marred my face just a rumor. It was also-how did you say it?-big, black and scary, which helped when all we did was shill fear."

Finn nods, "Who would know your face then, your _true_ face?"

Ben's eyes narrow, "Stormtroopers, First Order military personnel."

"Any settlers? Citizens? Outer Rim bounty hunters with itchy trigger fingers and no discretion?"

"If I stepped foot off a First Order vessel, it was on, always."

"Except for Crait."

"Yes, Crait was-different," Ben swallows, "Your people, some may know my face, from then."

"Our people have been briefed," Finn's mouth is open, but it is Poe's voice who says it, and they both turn to see the General come to visit them for the occasion.

Finn and Poe nod at one another, a greeting for this conversation they had been planning since Artorias.

"Briefed on what?" Ben asks, the air in the room growing tighter with Poe's presence. Ben had grown used to Finn's existence. Poe, however, was still an interloper in this space.

"C'mon Benny, I know you're smarter than this," Poe's usual devilish grin crosses his face as he says it, which only causes Ben to darken more.

Ben stares up at Poe, "Whatever this game is, I'm not playing," he moves to stand in the tiny room now populated by too many bodies, but before barking out an order to move, his voice drops an octave, and in almost a whisper he says, "I'm not-Ben Solo, I'm not-."

Before he can finish his thought, the air in the room shifts again, the tension breaking. Finn is on his feet, looming over Ben in a way that people simply did not do. Finn is in Ben's face before another thought can pass between the men.

Thinly veiled rage bubbles across Finn's features. His eyes are red, and speak to some sort of hidden violence just under the surface. When his words come out they are deep and harsh, just loud enough for those in the room to hear, but with the force of a public stoning, "No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to say that, not anymore."

"Finn-" there is a warning in Poe's voice, and Ben's not sure if it is meant for him or the former Stormtrooper.

Finn ignores Poe, and when he speaks again, there is a vitriol that surprises even Finn as it spouts from him, "You don't fucking get it, do you? All of that and you still don't fucking get it. You can't keep doing this. I saw Kylo Ren die, I saw him bleed out in front of me. I saw you kill him when you stepped between us and Hux."

Ben sits down, as Finn edges into him. Backing down is not something he can remember ever doing, and the feeling is odd, but there's no anger in Ben at Finn's tirade, because he knows who it is for, who Finn is trying to protect in his anger, and so he allows it to happen.

"You need to figure out who the fuck you are. You need to figure out who you need to be. Rey, she doesn't deserve a half man. She deserves _everything."_

"I know," Ben's voice is small, chastised in a way that can only come from something which concerns Rey.

"Do you?" Finn challenges.

Ben's self-loathing rises to the surface, "I-I can't-"

"Stop." Finn pauses, his hands shaking, before he tries and fails to compose himself. He turns around, before whipping back, his thoughts collected and his condemnation continuing, "You know she is not filling some void with you, you know that, right? She's not a broken person."

Ben's face contorts under Finn's sudden fiery authority, "What does that have to do wi-"

"She _loves_ you. Enough to give up _everything_ , to forsake _everything_. I've seen you, over these past weeks, I've watched you. You _can._ You _can_ give her all of those things. I've seen the way you look at her. This isn't hard, Ben. This is the easiest part of all of it. Stop being a fucking coward."

And Ben, he should be all rage, he should be throwing chairs, he should be choking them against the walls to get to Rey.

All he can do is dip his head into his hands, pulling at his hair, because now, he isn't sure, in the face of their belief, he isn't sure he can do any of it, not after what he has done.

Several moments go by, before Poe crouches to bring himself to Ben's level, whose face does not lift from staring at the floor. "Here is how easy it could be, here is how easy we would make it for you: I can send out a communique, it could be to the Outer Rim by tomorrow. Ben Solo, prodigal son, lost after the destruction of Luke Skywalker's temple, remembers himself and returns just in time for the final stand of The Resistance, joining them and regaining his birthright as the child of two of the most famous Rebels in all of history, before helping to destroy Kylo Ren alongside The Last Jedi."

There is a silence in the room that goes unbroken for several moments.

"That's quite a story," Ben says finally, looking up at Poe harshly.

"I tell them well."

"It will never work," a small, sarcastic smile flits across Ben's face as his head shakes from Poe to Finn.

Finn's rage is still on a level far beyond what it has ever been as he spits out, "And so you won't even try? After everything she was going to do, everything she _did,_ she's been laying comatose in a bed for 8 _fucking_ weeks because of what she did for _you_ , and…"

"Just let us leave," Ben interrupts softly, "We'll take the _Falcon._ The war is over, what does it matter?"

"And what? Run for the rest of your life? For the rest of hers?" Finn shakes his head, "At least with us, we can protect her, she can stay in one place, she doesn't have to run for her whole life."

"Is this not just your selfishness talking?" Ben challenges, "You want her to stay, that's all."

"Wouldn't you?" Finn volleys back.

Ben sits silenced, staring at Finn, who stares right back at him.

"And that's not what this is," Finn states as he breaks their staredown, "Rey, she means...she deserves..."

"I know-" Ben looks down.

"There is so much, so much she has had to live through, and she deserves..."

"I know," it comes out of Ben more forcefully, "I can't give her…"

"Yes, you can."

"I can't. The things that I've done..."

Poe cuts in, between the two warring men, "Ben Solo didn't do those things. Ben Solo didn't watch idly as the Hosnian system burned. Ben Solo was smuggling in the Outer Rim, after escaping from the Jedi Academy with only scant memories of his true identity when the Knights of Ren attacked."

"No."

"Ben Solo has been missing since the Jedi Academy, presumed dead. That's what the Galaxy believes, at least."

"You can't do that. You can't write history to say what you want it to."

"Can't we? Who's stopping us? It's just us now, Solo," Finn interjects, trying to shut Ben down.

Ben sighs, "It would never work, _Finn_ , because the Universe always finds out the secrets being kept from it. I remember when Darth Vader's true identity came to light, I remember the pain of that truth. Nothing can be kept secret forever."

Finn nods, "How long is enough?"

"What?" Ben's voice is incredulous, mistrustful.

"You said 'forever', does it have to be forever? How long is enough?"

"With Rey, yes, it has to be forever."

Poe tags in, taking the argument from Finn, "What if the alternative is nothing?"

Ben takes a stuttered breath in.

"Because that is the alternative," Poe's voice is no longer playful, but resolute and cold, "If the galaxy knows Kylo Ren is alive, they will rip you apart, and then you will have nothing, you will be nothing, and Rey will be the one who suffers the most. We can save Rey from that, if you just let us. Everyone is tired, they want more heroes and less villains, they will believe us if we present them with Ben Solo."

"It's wrong."

"Are you seriously the one who is going to say that?"

"I did those things. I killed those people."

"We can't take that away from you, that, you'll have to live with. We're not offering absolution. We are offering a chance to give her what she deserves. This is for _her_ , not for you. Don't waste this." Poe is done, he can't take the room anymore, and so he slams the button down to release the door behind him, "Right now Kylo Ren is M.I.A. as far as the galaxy is concerned, which buys us time, but you need to figure out what you want, soon."

Ben sits, silenced, chastised, as Finn slowly walks out behind Poe, his steps hesitant.

Finn stops, right at the threshold, and turns back to Ben, "You know what you need to do, you know what she deserves. Don't fuck this up by trying to resurrect someone who wants to stay dead."

And with that, the door closes behind them, leaving Ben alone with his thoughts, unable to move, his body shocked into a self-imposed prison.

 _Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to._

* * *

It's like moving through the deepest sand, to get to him. Something about his signature strong and clear on the _Falcon_ , and not just the ghost of who he used to be, it's even more bizarre, even more of a phantasma.

Even the _Falcon_ herself seems different. It's like she's preening, as Rey runs her hands along the cool durasteel interior. The lights of the cockpit seem to shine brighter, more merrily, and Rey suspects, if she were to power the _Falcon_ on now, her engines would purr where they once clanged and sputtered. Rey runs down her last mechanical analysis in her head, looking for things that she may have done differently on her last diagnostic, but comes up short. This wasn't the result of any of her mechanical jerry-rigging. The _Falcon_ knows, somehow. She knows, her Ben has come back to her.

Rey takes her time, letting the rivets and dents tickle the palm of her hand as she moves down the corridors, her steps light and tentative. She savors being back here, back in the first place she can truly remember feeling like she was home.

Until finally, she finds herself outside his quarters, and it is not foreign or odd to consider this room his. Maybe it should be. It's the room that Han had unceremoniously kicked her out of when he recommandered his ship, all those years ago. It's the room that she would sit for hours with Leia in, talking and planning. It's the room that Poe took over, after avoiding it for months, when rooming got too cramped after Leia's death. It's the room that she would catch Chewie in front of, sometimes, after it all, his hand raised in muscle memory, before forgetting that, no, Han wouldn't answer that door anymore.

And now, it's Ben's, and somehow, it's okay. It makes sense despite everything.

She takes a breath, then another.

Raising her hand up, she moves to knock, her hands prickling in anticipation.

But then suddenly, he is there, in front of her, all of him, on the _Falcon._ Without her even having to knock he is there, and everything lapses into a surreal state.

Neither of them are breathing, can breathe, their eyes locked. Every muscle seizes in both their bodies, because this is real.

When it reaches a fever pitch, she hears her body dragging in a long breath, making up for the seconds? Minutes? Hours? Of not breathing, and her eyes naturally close.

When she opens them, he isn't there. Every hair on her body stands in that millisecond, that feeling so ingrained in her, of Ben, of Kylo, being there and then not, after years of seeing him disappear in front of her when their force bond cut off, that it doesn't even seem odd that he is no longer where he was a moment ago. Once her brain catches up with her, though, her stomach instantly drops. Had it all been fake? Has this all been a fever dream?

And then, she feels him, his arms gathering her midsection to him, pushing the air out of her into an exhale, finally. She looks down, and there he is, on his knees, looking up at her, his eyes wide and earnest in their disbelief.

Her fingers find their way to his hair and they are like that for a long time. Ben, Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader of the Galaxy, _Ben_ , he is on his knees in front of her, burying his head in her stomach, as she combs through his hair, tracing the shell of his ears, feeling him finally beneath her.

His face is hidden, and she wishes it weren't, wishes he would look up at her again, but before she can think any further, his hold around her waist tightens, grasping at her before pulling her up off her feet and carrying her into the room behind him.

Gasping at the change, she puts her hands on his shoulders to steady herself before he deposits her on the bed, and then his body is over hers like a blur. He is in her neck, his hair tickling down her chin as he mouths at her. He is so quick, his lips ghosting over the lines of her throat, her collarbone. The only sounds that fill the room are her sharp breaths as he sucks at her skin.

Her mind is in a frenzy. One moment she was at the door and now she is under him, his body firm and insistent and intoxicating. She is already losing herself in the sensations, but that's not what she wanted, not now. Now she wants to be clear, to be present, to be with him, finally.

Her hands move to his shoulders, broad and heavy on top of her and she presses there. Instantly, he freezes, his body becoming stiff and rigid under her touch. Pressing more firmly, it is clear she is asking a silent question for him to detach from her and face her, but he doesn't budge.

That's when she feels it. A hot wet tear falling on the curve of her neck, running down, settling in the hollow of her collarbone, before another, and another, and then he is shaking under her fingers.

Her mind blooms with his thoughts, and she can feel how hard it is for him to look at her now, in this place, and for him to know he could have her, he could really have her, and give her something, give her everything. That is not a fantasy anymore, holding her in happiness instead of in angst, she is soft and pliant in his hands, ready for the future.

 _The future._

They have a future, and it is with each other. No matter what, no matter for how long, or short, they have something together that is more than just a fated death match, and it is too much for Ben, all of the dreams he kept tucked away under the visage of a broken man now real in front of him.

She has to close her eyes to stop her own tears, her hands finding his hair and allowing him to hide, for just a moment, like he wants to.

What this is, what this moment means, she knows, is so much. Years of hits and misses, years of confusion and anguish, and now they are here in a place neither of them ever thought they would have the chance to be.

Pushing slightly upwards again, he gives, and his eyes meet hers. There is so much in them, so much hope and fear and longing. Slowly, she lifts her head to his, kissing the wet orbs his tears formed on his cheeks away. His eyes close as the light press of her lips to his skin moves down, following the damp tracks his tears made on his face until they are gone, until she has absorbed that pain and fear, halved it, carrying it alongside him. His shaking has ceased, and all he can do is stare at her.

Pressing him further up, she flips their positions so she is on top, never breaking eye contact, and slides down his body until she is kneeling on the floor in front of him, his long legs planted on the floor. He sits up to keep looking at her as she kneels between his legs, her eyes scouring his full form. They are locked like this for minutes, as Rey's hands move over him, pressing her fingers into him to make sure he is real, that he is intact.

Ben is docile under her touch, allowing her time to run her hands over his shoulders, his ribs, his stomach, and down his legs to the bottoms of his feet, all while staring at her in awe.

This continues until checking the reality of him through his clothes is not enough for her. She stands, slowly, lifting his shirt over his head, baring his torso to her touch. Then she moves down, kneeling again to relieve him of out of the confines of his pants.

And then, Ben is there, naked in front of her, and the touch of her fingertips is too little to show him how much she sees him, how much she adores him. She bends down to his feet, taking his gaze with her, and presses her lips onto his toes, onto the very furthest reach of him.

Ben flushes instantly at the feel of her lips there, and his blush only widens as she moves, so slowly, up his foot, her lower lip dragging across the soft, untouched skin there.

She wants to see all of him, to touch all of him, to love all of him. All the parts of him untouched and sensitive, and all the parts of him scarred and mangled, she wants it all, and now, she can take it all.

There are no words, just this, just the soft sound of her lips on his skin, as he tenses and relaxes each time her lips meet some new, virgin part of him. When she reaches the insides of his knees, where scars marr the surface, his muscles contract and he begins shaking again, and so she lingers there, getting him used to her love even in these untouched parts of him, darting her tongue out to drag across him instead of just her kisses. He inhales sharply and her eyes meet his above her. She keeps eye contact as she moves up his thighs, so slowly, her tongue lapping at the soft flesh between his legs, stopping to comfort when they hit a scar or imperfections.

Never again, she vows internally, never again will she allow him to be marked. There was enough violence, now there would just be love that touched his skin.

And he is hard, so hard, now. He holds his breath as she grazes his balls, which constrict and loosen under her touch as she moves slowly up his shaft with her kisses. Somehow, even with her mouth on his dick, pressing into the soft skin covering his hardness, it is not lewd or sordid, it is not even particularly sexual, even though it does make his cock leak with want. It is just as loving as her kisses to the rest of him, making him feel seen and safe.

Her hands find his hips, as her mouth silks over his tip, as she laps at his pre-cum, tasting him. At seeing this, at feeling this, Ben can't help but let out an impossibly low groan, which makes Rey's mouth tick upward just for a moment, before she moves from his cock down to his hair above it, and then, it's like she has broken him, the small whining sounds that start pouring from him as she moves slowly up his stomach, his breath hitching and picking up, make her break out in a full smile, as she looks up at him.

And then he is done for, he could cum, will cum, from just this, from just that fucking smile. He knows he will explode if she doesn't stop soon, and in an instant, he pulls her up into his lap, her eyes wide at the sudden change.

But before she can open her mouth to protest, he is kissing her again, his mouth hot and insistent on hers, and he can feel her melt into him.

She is still fully clothed, which bothers Ben more than he thinks he has ever been bothered by anything. He needs her closer, he needs her impossibly close to him. He wants to fuse her into him, to keep her safe within him. Slowly he pulls her back, her pupils already blown so wide, and unbelts her tunic. Rey, at first, doesn't understand, until she does, and she helps him to slowly undress her, pulling the fabric from her skin and leaving gooseflesh in its wake until she is bare in front of him, her nipples pebbling in the cool air of the _Falcon_.

When she is naked above him, her tunic fallen to the floor, he stares at her for an impossibly long time, his hands on her hips, his mouth agape, running his eyes over her.

It is her turn to blush under the intensity of his stare. She tries to turn her face away, but he catches her chin, moving her gaze back until it is fully on him. She brings her hands to his head, tucking his hair behind his ear. She traces his ears before her eyes go cloudy, her own resolve faltering as he stares at her.

He reaches for her hair, pulling her face to his, and their lips meet gently, testing, and for the first time in this room, they feel the force weave between them. The depth of it spurs them on as they deepen the kiss, but it is still slow, all encompassing. Ben moves a hand from her hip up her taut stomach and further up until his touch is featherlight on her breast. His other hand moves down to cup her ass, and guide her over his dick.

When their cores meet, they both gasp, breaking apart for a moment to look down at where they touched.

She is so wet on top of him. He can feel her _dripping_ onto him now, her cunt just barely rubbing up against his shaft. He can see her shiny slick across his cock as she begins to move slowly, incrementally, a soft moan escaping her as the bud of her clit drags along him.

When he can't take it anymore, he wraps his arms around her, drawing her impossibly close to his body. His face is in her neck, and he can smell her, all of her, salty and sandy, and Rey.

The sounds he makes, the sounds that escape him as she picks up her pace, rubbing his dick along her folds, are unlike anything she heard during their short trysts on Mustafar. They reverberate deep in her belly and go straight to her cunt, soaking him more fully as she slowly runs her cunt over the impossibly hard length of his cock.

There are no words now, just the sounds of them breathing, of his slow moaning as she drags herself over him and he licks the inside of her mouth.

And then, he needs all of her. He needs to take her, to stretch her, to fill her with him, coating her in himself. He wants all of her like she wants all of him.

He pulls her back, slightly, angling her hips, and looks at her, so intently, before guiding her down onto him.

Her sharp, high sound is met with his deep, guttural groan as he slides effortlessly into her, parting her like he was always meant to do.

Ben shivers as she slides down and down, her cunt so hot and warm, tightly enveloping him. When she reaches the base, she shuts her eyes, waiting for the sting of the stretch of him to ease, but his eyes never leave her face, even as he brings his hands up to tease her nipples gently, he keeps his eyes on her, and watches as her expression relaxes into pleasure before she moves her hips, grinding into him.

There is a spot inside of her that she hits as she rolls her hips on him, and when she does, her eyes pop open to find his. A sly smile spreads across his face as he holds her hips down on that spot, before slowly thrusting up into her, languishing in that spot. The moan she gifts him with is so much louder than he has heard her before.

He wants to see just how loud he can make her tonight, and for every night after this.

Bracing herself on his shoulders, his face comes down to nuzzle her tits as he quickens under her, until they are both moving in unison against each other, cresting and falling in rhythm. What flows through them, what has flowed through their veins since that night on Ahch-To when they first touched, meets again, their bodies communicating to each other like they do on the battlefield.

It isn't like their first, or second, time joining each other; it is slow, and deliberate. Her nails scratch his scalp slowly, as his tongue finds her nipple, licking a stripe up to her neck. Each sensation they give each other is magnified tenfold. They are hyper-aware of every breath, every sigh. They can feel each inch of each other's skin tingle, feel each other's pleasure mount through their bond in the force. As his stomach contracts, his balls tensing full of his cum that was only ever meant to fill her, her stomach does too, muscles tensing to confine his thickness even more.

Something starts to crescendo between them, some feeling of joy and elation and balance. At the same time, it enters both of their minds, blooming endlessly and shuffling off all darkness, and they know, instantly, what it is, what it means.

A white, hot flash of pure light flashes between them, leaking from both their bodies, as her cunt clenches around him, dragging his cum out of him. There is shouting, they know, but it blends in, all of their senses overloading into this moment until it crashes into a moment of ecstasy as they stare into each other. They let it wash over them, bathe them, and there is no fear, on her part or his. They allow it to take them until they are heaving in each other's arms, spent and euphoric.

They stay locked together for a long time, panting into each other, her head resting on his shoulder, until he slips out of her. As he does, he lifts her languishing body and settles her how he has always wanted to in his arms on the bed beneath them, eclipsing her body with his own. Lazily, he draws circles in her exposed skin, trailing up from her hip to the side of her breast, up her neck as breathes her in, tracing her freckles like he did that night on Mustafar. He reaches her chin, tilting it towards him until their eyes meet. A small smile spreads between them as they kiss.

It is as close to divine grace as he will ever feel.

Before he drifts off in her arms, he feels the whisper of her soft voice against his ear.

"Welcome home, Ben."

* * *

And that's it (except for the epilogue)! Thank you for your patience with this. It was such a delicate chapter that I had to write and rewrite because the interactions had to be really exact in order for it to all make sense (I am still not entirely sure about it, but it's been forever, so here it is).

All of this has been an amazing experience because of all of you. Thank you for everyone who gave kudos, left comments, or even just clicked and read for all your encouragement and beautiful words. You have no idea how excited I was to get each one.

Alright, see you guys in the epilogue!


	25. Epilogue: Part I

CW: See endnotes if you are concerned with blood, violent accidents (especially involving the vulnerable), or are just not in the angst headspace right now.

* * *

"Do you want to hold her?"

Light from the city outside filters in through the living room windows. Rey had known he was there, in the shadows, watching; she could feel his gaze on them, could see the red glow from his ankle bracelet light the hallway he had been hiding in for the last dozen or so minutes. She didn't want to talk, didn't want to break him of whatever dream he was in, but the small bundle on her chest was growing restless and she knew she had to move to avoid the little one's tinny cries.

Ben lurks out, a shade in the darkened room. The neon lights from Galactic City bounce off his bare chest, then die, before resurrecting, the ephemeral darkness swallowed by light, a tide rolling against his soul.

"No. This is enough." He watches, a few yards off, his neck craning to see the new life, as if afraid to get too close.

Rey smiles, the exhaustion of the last few days catching up with her. The birth had been an ordeal. They were hurdling through an asteroid field on the _Falcon_ when it happened. There was yelling and blood and cursing and crying, and finally, there was her, who shut everyone, even Poe, right up, as she careened, screaming into the galaxy.

"They finally settled on a name," Rey offers, as she tilts her chin to look down at the baby, her hand coming up to brush the little one's curls.

Ben's eyebrow twitches, curious.

"Paige. Paige Tico. But they'll call her by her initials."

"P.T.?"

"Petey."

As the name is said the baby readjusts herself on Rey's chest, switching her head so that Ben can see her full face. Petey's eyes open in the dark to look at him. He knows he's just a big black blob to her still, her days old eyes still weak, unable to focus. Petey blinks a few times, her eyes closing at different speeds as she takes him in.

"Petey," he repeats, and a ghost of a smile appears on the infant's face, which immediately transmutes itself onto Ben's face.

Before he can think, he's sitting next to them, his large hand splayed on Petey's impossibly small back. The baby melts deeper into Rey at his touch, and they sit like that, Rey, Ben, and Petey, for hours, as Petey's parents get a full night of much needed rest.

* * *

It rains, all the time, on Coruscant.

And Ben hates it. Should hate it. Wants to hate it.

But then he sees Rey, who pulls up a chair to the windows of their apartment everytime the torrents happen. He watches the way she curls her legs under her, her eyes wide and unblinking, staring at the water as it sluices down the panes in front of her. He watches as she presses her hands against the cool glass, her body heat fogging up in front of her, and everything in him melts, in a way that he shouldn't melt, that someone like him shouldn't be able to do.

"Do you want to go outside?"

Her head perks up at his voice, and that smile, that smile that changed everything for Ben, plays across her face.

"Are you sure…" her eyes flicker down to his ankle.

"We won't go far."

Ten minutes later he's soaked through, large droplets clinging to his hair, and he's miserable, should be miserable, but then she pulls him to her, slipping over the smooth flooring of their shared home, and wraps a towel around him, and that familiar heat blooms in his chest for Rey, as her hands move up and down his body. He feels the lightness of being, something white and hot. And on this gloomy, cold day in Coruscant, they radiate the light back and forth between one another as he takes her into his arms and lays her softly down on their bed, drinking from each other's signatures as their world grows hazy with love.

* * *

Rey finds him practicing forms in the garden. The night is bright under the full bloom of the four moons, which shine through the trees, throwing layered shadows on the ground around them, making everything feel three dimensional.

It's otherworldly, and the night is still as she nears him. There is no sound except for the soft whirl of his staff punctuated by his deep, counting breaths.

She stills on the outskirts of his consciousness, something in her tugging as he comes into full view.

It's not his staff. It's hers.

It looks so much smaller in his hands, but he wields it no less deftly.

She wonders sometimes, as she does now, if he misses it, his saber, misses the violent vibrations of it under his hand, the burn of its exhaust. But it also fills her with something indescribable, to see him handle the weapon that saved her life countless times with the same respect he would his own.

"Your shoulders are too high."

He pauses, looking over at her leaning against a tree. She unfolds her arms and walks nearer to him, until her hands are on him, grounding him. Everything in him loosens, and she steps back.

"You're used to a heavier weapon."

His eyes flash and the air changes. He huffs, tight and sarcastic, "You'll be a great Master."

She can feel anger coming off him in waves, but she remains still. Calm. She stares straight back at his black gaze. He breaks first.

"When will they be here?" He turns away from her as he asks, beginning to lazily sway the staff in his hand.

"Rose and Finn said they'd be landing around sunrise. They were able to locate four of them."

He stops. Rey can feel him take a steadying breath, and then another.

"I'm going up to the Manarai mountains before then."

It's Rey's turn to take her own steadying breath. She knew this may happen, but had been so preoccupied with getting the grounds of their new compound ready that she had forgotten to fully plan for it.

"When will you be back?"

"Days, maybe. Maybe longer. There's still natural vegetation there. Artifacts-"

"Ben-"

"Maybe ruins of-"

"Ben," his name is sharp on her lips, but he doesn't turn to face her, "Why are you running from this?"

They both stop breathing at her question and the night is still once again. Some meters off, the wind picks up, gently rustling through the tall trees.

Slowly, she circles him, until she is right in front of him, until they are almost touching, "I need you for this. I need you here."

"The Council won't agree," his gaze doesn't meet hers, instead, his eyes dart from the ground to her tunic, and back to the ground.

Rey's mouth is open, "All of this hinges on us doing this together. I thought you knew that. I thought we agreed on that."

"They would never trust me around them."

"They don't have a choice, this isn't their decision."

"They _shouldn't_ trust me around them," Ben's gaze springs up to meet hers, timed perfectly so he can see Rey's expression harden at his words, "Something will go wrong, I will go wrong." He breathes out, "I can't-not _children_ , Rey."

Rey closes her eyes slowly, going as still as the night. He is breathing hard now, looming, but Rey being Rey, she just clears a path in the Force towards him, her shoulders held squarely, before reaching for him.

He prepares to feel her hand gently against his cheek, prepares to lean into her warmth, but instead, he feels her grab the staff from him before she tosses it lightly across the grass.

"Sit down."

It is a command, he knows it, even if it does come out soft. He immediately complies.

Once she sees his breathing even, she turns and walks away, back to the houses.

"What are you doing?" he asks, more confused than demanding.

"Wait here."

And so he does.

A few minutes later, he sees Rey's form walking across the courtyard, her gait uneven, carrying something on her hip.

When she gets closer, Ben can see the moon's beams bouncing off Petey's black hair, now uneven from sleep, as they curl into Rey's shoulder.

"Rey, you shouldn't have woken her."

She nods, a signal that she has both acknowledged and chosen to ignore his chastisement, "She did something new today, when you were out sulking in the fields."

"I wasn't sulking," Rey's eyebrow shoots up, dubious, "Okat, maybe I was pondering. Definitely not sulking."

Ben thinks he sees a ghost of a smile splay across her face, but he will never be sure because she almost immediately turns her head towards the sleeping Tico.

"Duckie, wake up." Rey starts rubbing Petey's belly and the little girl stirs, her body jerking to shrug off the sleep. Her eyes fight opening and her head bobs, trying to wave off the intrusion, before she lets out a faint whimper. Rey whispers into her ear, "Shhh, there's someone here who needs to see you."

Petey rubs her eyes, blinking awake. Her eyes are soft with slumber, until Ben's figure unblurs in front of her, and her eyes widen in wonder.

"Unc'Ben!" she yells, before propelling herself off Rey and into Ben's arms.

He can't contain the abrupt laugh of surprise which escapes him. Petey wraps her little arms around his neck, pulling him in tighter, and he wraps his arms around her tiny form, before he realizes what she said.

"She-did she just say?"

Rey nods, "She was mad about something all day." Rey starts to rub Petey's back as the girl clings to Ben, "I couldn't get her to nap or eat and I couldn't figure it out, until she started yelling for her Uncle Ben, very loudly and unexpectedly. Turns out, she was just looking for you."

Ben folds Petey in closer to him, "Hey Petey," his voice is soft, greeting her back for the first time.

Petey sighs, contented.

"Poe is gonna be so mad," Rey's smiles, and then Rey's smile is on Ben's face.

Ben rolls his eyes, "Poe is so conceited he thought his name should have been her first word."

Rey chuckles as Petey stirs, pointing and grunting at a ball across the yard, clearly wanting to play.

Ben unwraps Petey from around his neck and stands her on his thigh, looking straight at her cherubic face, "It's late little one, maybe we can just walk?"

And Petey, she doesn't understand a word Rey says, especially the words, "No," "Please don't touch that," or "Don't jump!" but for her Uncle Ben, she understands perfectly, nodding as he sets her down. She is wobbly, still in the first few weeks of walking by herself, but he takes her by the hand, crouching his impossibly tall body down to accommodate her impossibly short one as they walk the garden path back to the house.

Rey walks behind them, their own personal procession, stopping and kneeling each time Ben stops to talk Petey through the garden, telling her the names of the plants, explaining the little histories of how each flower came to be as they walk along.

Rey suspects he is making half of it up, but is as enthralled by his tales as Petey is, drinking them in alongside her. By the time they make it back to the house, Petey's body is once again slumped in sleep, this time, over Ben's shoulder.

He lays her back in her cot as Rey comes up behind him to drape a blanket over the sleeping babe. They stay like that a while, Rey, Ben, Petey and the moon, before Ben takes a step back, his voice shaking.

"What if I-?" _lose my temper, hurt them?_

Rey follows him, "Have you ever? With Petey?"

"Petey is-Petey. It's different."

"It's not so different. The kids who are coming tomorrow-they all need the same things she does."

"There's so much that I've done-"

Rey stops him, her voice firm, "You've answered for what you've done, Ben. You stood in front of that tribunal and answered. Give yourself a chance. Everyone else in the Universe is, why can't you do the same for yourself?"

"Rey-"

Petey stirs at the slightly raised voices and they look to her in her cot, both taking a step towards her before realizing it.

They're quieted, looking down at her waiting for her breathing to shallow again.

When it does, Rey whispers, "They trust you with her, you know."

Ben angles his body towards Rey, a quizzical look clouding his features.

She turns her head to him, "Finn. Rose."

"Rose hates me."

"She doesn't-" Rey stops, breathing out, "Rose lost more than anyone else in the war, Ben."

"I know."

"It was different. It wasn't like Finn or I, who couldn't even remember our families. She _had_ them, she _had_ Paige, and then she didn't."

Ben swallows.

"She may not be able to forgive you-but she trusts you, with her _daughter,_ with the most important thing in the Universe to her. She _trusts_ that you would never do anything because she has seen the man you've become."

Rey grabs his hand. It's shaking under hers. They stand like that, in Petey's nursery, for seconds, minutes, silently staring down at where their hands meet.

"I'm scared, Rey."

It is small, so quiet that she thinks maybe she misheard, but she knows she didn't because she can feel it in him, but he has never, ever voiced something like that out loud before, ever.

Her grip tightens around his and she looks at him, her other hand coming up to tuck his long hair behind his ear.

"I'm not."

* * *

The gold dice sway from the roof of the cockpit as Rey pops out a panel to rewire the acceleration compensator with a long groan of frustration.

"I just replaced these fuses, there is no way they have already blown."

"Welcome to the _Millenium Falcon_ , the biggest hunk of junk in the Galaxy-"

"Shhh! She'll hear you," Rey spreads her arms across the control panel, as if trying to shield the ship's ears from Ben's insults.

"Hey, can you check the orbital monitoring display? It's on your left, you just need to…"

Ben slaps the display at just the right angle, the angle it took Rey years to perfect, and gets it to blink to life on the first try.

Rey's head tilts back, taking a deep breath in to compensate for the shame she feels at her gaffe, because of course he knows. Her eyes tilt to his, side-eyeing to gauge his reaction, and he is just smiling into the viewport window in front of him.

"Right," she nods, before turning back to the panel, her own smile pasted hard to her face.

He feels free, in a way that he only usually feels when he is inside of Rey, but this time, it is because it's one of the rare times he has been allowed off world since the end of the war. His "unique diplomatic connections" had been the formal reason he had been permitted to accompany Rey on this mission, but Ben knew it had ultimately been the Nabberie's influence that pushed the Council over the edge.

But the feeling is fleeting, because Naboo is suddenly beneath them, and they both pause, smiles falling from both their faces.

It's still as beautiful and as blue as the first time they saw it, right after the end of the war. It bathes them in that same ethereal light, but that elation he had felt in his stomach at getting to show it to her the first time, getting to offer something of himself, of his past, that wasn't absolute darkness, getting to say _this, this is my family too, it's not all Vader and Luke and shit, some of it was beautiful,_ all of that is gone, replaced with a throbbing nausea.

He looks at her and he knows, without having to dip into her mind, that she is replaying the last time they were here, too, replaying that night that could have changed the entirety of everything.

Something in him knows that when they get down there, the cool spring air that ran over them that night will greet them again, and he can almost feel it, the panting, the sweating, her skin under his palms as her body ran over his.

And he can almost taste it too, the nightmares, and the screams, and how, in those early days, he would wake, shaking, screaming, his mouth tasting of dust and sulfur, his mind replaying his atrocities to him, and how she would take him into her arms and soothe him as he cried into her naked breast.

"Did I ruin Naboo for you?" the question escapes him and they both break from the memories of those short years ago. It is small, and earnest, but it hangs between them.

"No," she's looking straight ahead as she says it, detached almost, she stares at the planet, before she stops herself and turns fully to him and repeats, "No, never, I just, I didn't expect it to feel-"

She can't finish, doesn't know how to finish, but he knows, and he nods. Silently, they engage in the landing sequence, her eyes focused on the controls, only betraying her to look at the lush, verdant forests and lakes of Varykino when she absolutely needs to for navigational purposes.

They land, and the sounds of the Lake District leak in as the _Falcon_ 's engines subside, and then they're there again. His mind is abuzz with thoughts, that they should have said no to this mission, that he had ruined it all and this place would never be what he wanted it to be, that it was a mistake, until he surprises himself by swallowing down his self-loathing and instead, grabs her hand.

"We're in an ocean," they're the words she usually says to him, that she said to him every night those first weeks after the war, when the nightmares wouldn't stop, but now, they come from him, trying to calm her.

"We're in an ocean," she whispers back, and they are echoes, echoes of who they were the first time they landed here, their nights here before Ben's decision.

Echoes of the way he held her body in the frigid waters as he told her to kick, and showed her how to move her arms, the same way his father had taught him to swim in the same waters years before.

Echoes of her face, softly lit and smiling as they played under the soft sheets, before his mouth found her body and her smile turned into something more raw.

Echoes of the flower crowns she weaved for R2 and Threepio, each wearing them as proudly as royalty as they flitted across the Palace, because Rey had made them.

Echoes of how she crowned him, too, in the Room of Morning Mists, kissing down his scoffs at the ridiculous gesture before kissing away his tears, because of course he had wanted one, wanted everything she ever made, would ever make, but he didn't know how to ask.

Echoes of his head in her lap and the clouds lazing above them, their kisses tasting of berries and cream as they ground themselves into the dirt below.

And echoes of that night, when he awoke, gasping, like he did every night in the First Order, like he did every night in those weeks after the war. The only difference was, after the war, he woke alongside Rey, her fingers in his hair, willing him to breathe.

" _Breathe," her fingers, steady and sure, press into the sides of his face as she wills him._

" _I can't."_

" _Look at me, look at how I'm breathing."_

 _His eyes flit to hers, then down, watching the slow rise and fall of her bare shoulders._

" _We're in an ocean," tears stream down his face but he is_ trying.

 _Rey nods, "We're in an ocean-" she repeats as she draws him to her chest. He can hear her heartbeat under his ear as she whispers, as his fingers grasp deeply into her newly forming hips, the first hallmarks of his care for her. "And it's dark, but you can see the water, and you know you're safe," he's swallowing down air, but he is settling at her words, his wracking sobs abating._

" _We're in an ocean," he repeats, whispering back into her, his breathing even, but he's not pulling away, and neither is she._

" _Let the waves take you out, Ben, light up the sea."_

 _It is quiet, then for a moment. The quiet before the storm. They can both feel it but drag this moment out, their hands on each other, lips on each others skin, until they finally have to break._

 _He pulls back first, "I can still see their faces, I can still smell them burning, they're all still here," the words are harsh as he taps his temple too hard, "And they deserve justice, they deserve to know."_

 _Rey eyes flutter back orbs of white tears in the moonlight, but she nods, because she knows._

" _If you-if you were taken from me, I would want the person who did it to pay. I wouldn't be able to think, to sleep, to do anything, until they did." Rey's hands come up to tuck Ben's hair behind his ears as he whispers, "I can't keep doing this."_

" _I know Ben," and she does._

" _I'm sorry."_

" _No, Ben. This is the right thing. Don't apologize, don't ever apologize for doing the right thing."_

 _There is no more sleep that night. He traces her body in his hands and she clings to him until the mists from the lake settle on top of them._

 _When the sunrises that morning, they stand facing each other on the veranda. There are only two witnesses, R2 and Threepio, still in their flower crowns. They watch as the priestess ties Ben and Rey together, their silent vows willed to each other without fanfare._

 _As they leave Varykino, Ben and Rey Solo send a message to the Galaxy as Kylo Ren and the Last Jedi, as husband and wife: the Supreme Leader surrenders._

 _The tribunal comes from all parts of the Universe, each slow regenerating system with its own delegate._

 _It takes four months to get a verdict._

 _The Universe is weary in the years following the war. Poe, while misguided, had been ultimately right about one thing: they wanted to believe in heroes, not villains._

 _And so that's what they did._

" _The mark of a truly civilized, enlightened universe is the ability to forgive-"_

 _Rey's ears had started ringing after that, unable to hear anything more of their decision, unable to feel anything as her blood starting running again. When she came back from the shock, Finn's hand was in hers and Ben was still there, standing, no blaster fire hole in his temple._

 _There were conditions, of course, that Rey and Poe and Finn played a large part of, the galaxy putting their trust in the Last Jedi. That he be monitored, remotely, at all times, for the first two years. That he not travel off world without prior consent. That he destroy his saber._

 _And then it is over._

 _He has answered for his crimes._

 _She takes his hand in hers and they turn away to their new life._

They deboard quietly, but their hands are still interlinked, the memories from the past washing over them now. The lake in front of them is dancing in the spring rain.

Rey stares at it, transfixed, and Ben doesn't try to pull her away.

"It's all new, you know."

"Hm?"

"Everything's new here," he swallows, touching her face just enough to let her know he is there, but not to cage her, "The leaves, the grass, the clouds, they're all new. They didn't touch that time."

"No, it's not new, it's still what it was before," She shakes her head, bring him down with her to crouch amongst the super-bloom. They run their hands over the delicate petals, feeling the connections, the roots reach out to all other living things. "They were just in another form then, just in a different place. They've been reborn." _Like you, like us._

He can feel it, too, feel how they used to be, how they are, how they will always be.

Her arms wrap around his neck, drawing him in, pressing his lips to hers, "Take me for a swim."

And he does.

* * *

"Ben! Your forehead," Rey sets her canteen down, her cheeks flushed pink with training and steps towards him, her arm out to him in a second.

"Davvos got me, that little nerfherder," he explains, as he drops down in front of her.

Rey laughs, despite herself, while wiping the blood from his brow, "We've been working on his left stance."

"Thanks for telling me."

Rey cleans the wound, applying a bacta pad before kissing his forehead. He smiles at the touch before grabbing her, sitting her across his lap in one fell swoop and kissing her back.

"I have work," her voice is breathy against his face.

"I know, just let me see you."

And so she does. She kisses him soundly on his lips and each eyelid, before she hops up and continues to prep supplies for their upcoming mission.

"How's Telis?" he obviously hates that the moment was gone, but understands the needs to move forward.

"She's just mad at the world. She'll either get over it or she won't."

He huffs, "Great mentoring there."

Rey chuckles, "I don't want to change her, you know? If she's mad, let her be mad. There's a lot to be mad about."

He comes up behind her, enveloping her in his arms, kissing her shoulder before resting his chin on it and looking out beyond to where their students are sparring one another.

She sighs contented, watching as the students giggle while swiping wildly at one another.

"They're not Jedi," she asserts.

"No, they're not."

"And they're not Sith."

He lets out an amused grunt, "No, they're not."

"Then what are they?"

"Skywalkers."

Rey turns fully to him, her whole body open in awe.

"That will be their legacy. Not rules, not hate, but truth," he continues, voice full of something more.

"Skywalkers," Rey repeats, and she turns back to the children, smiling, "Skywalkers."

* * *

"A little help here!"

Ben throws Finn his lightsaber, his new lightsaber, the one Rey and Poe had fought for him to have on these fact finding missions. Finn catches it midair, switching it on just as the dragonsnake emerges, cutting its head off with one flourish of the grey blade.

"Hey, you're pretty good with that thing," Rey winks as she runs past, cutting down smaller snakes jutting out of from the ground as she does.

"Yeah, well, call it osmosis," Finn yells back, "I trained you for long enough."

And then, they're at the end of the temple, and that's it. All they have to do is walk out, ancient Sith baddie dealt with, and go home.

"Alright, ready?" Ben asks, hand poised to open the much too large doors in front of them.

"Hey, I think this is the first time we've done something where we haven't been a hair's breadth away from death," Rey supplies, looking up at both of them on either side of her.

"Or eaten by Rathgars," Finn adds.

"Aw, Rathgars," Rey remembers.

"Ugh, Rathgars," Ben does too.

"Maybe we're getting better at this," she smiles as she says it.

Ben takes that moment to push the doors open, but the light they expected from outside doesn't greet them.

Instead their eyes move up and up, and up, staring at the obstruction, some sort of huge, smooth boulder.

They stand there, dumbfounded, before the doors groan.

The boulder splits open at the sound, a huge, wide mouth splaying across it, revealing rows of teeth leading all the way back to a pinpoint of a black hole. Two short, mechanical burst emit from its mouth, before long, armored appendages unfurl from beneath it, drawing it to full height. Even Ben's neck is strained upwards as it stretches before them.

"Well, that's," Rey's head ticks to the side, "new."

Slowly, without taking their eyes off the monster, Finn extends the saber back to Ben, "Here, I think it's your turn."

* * *

"Stop it!"

Everyone in the room freezes and tilts to the screaming almost three year old who no one had seen in the doorway.

"Petey, baby, you should be in bed."

Petey doesn't even acknowledge her mother, instead, her eyes are on Rey and Poe.

She marches right up to her Aunt Rey and grabs her hand. Rey allows herself to be dragged by the spitfire up right up to Poe, who up until a moment ago she was arguing with about the best approach into the slaver's operation on Geonosis.

Petey grabs her Uncle Poe's hand next and forces the two to hold hands, which they do, because of course they do.

"Say sorry," the little girl's voice is stern as it reprimands her elders.

"Petey, it's…." Poe, ever the newly minted diplomat tries his hand at negotiation.

"Say sorry!" Petey insists, and she, as they quickly discover, is much more skilled at the fine art of the deal than Poe is.

"I'm sorry," the words are out of Poe's mouth so quickly, Rey has to stop from laughing, schooling her features down as she looks from Petey to Poe.

"Now Aunt Rey," the little girl's deep brown eyes turn to her, and Rey is immediately stone-faced again.

"Sorry, Poe," she supplies promptly.

"Good!" Petey drops their hands before looking up at the two adults, and raising her hands as if she were calming unruly beasts, "Be nice, be nice."

"Your Uncle Poe and I aren't mad at each other, love, it's just...sometimes rebuilding a galaxy is tough."

"Yeah, lil' bit, we still love each other," Poe reaches out to awkwardly pet Rey's hair, "See?"

Petey's eyes narrow, unconvinced, before turning to her father.

"Even when things get hard, we don't yell, right Dad?"

"Right, Petey," Finn replies, his grin turning into a smirk.

"We use quiet voices. We talk."

"You're right, Petey, we're sorry," Rey apologizes for both of them.

"S'okay. Now you learned."

And that's how Petey solved the crisis of Geonosis.

Petey turns, satisfied, before spotting Ben trying to conceal a smile across the room.

"Excuse me Uncle Ben, I would like a bedtime story, please."

"Petey, he JUST told you a story when he put you to sleep an hour ago," Rose turns to Ben, "You really don't have to."

He just smiles back at her. Rose, it's still hard for Rose to interact with Ben. Poe and Finn, they are great, but Rose is cold, and even now, even years later, she only talks to him if it has something to do with Petey.

"Of course. What were you thinking? The Parade of the Ewoks? Or Rogue One?"

"Both!"

"Well, then, we better hurry."

* * *

The washing machine is broken, again.

And Rose is over to fix it, again.

It happens, with eleven people on the compound. More, if they get visitors from the now embryonic new alliance.

Rey can fix droids and weapons and vehicles, but with the modern conveniences which dot their home, she is sometimes hopelessly lost. The machinery is more or less the same, really, but there is something in these things that intimidates her more than she wants to admit. They represent something she never had, a home, a family, domesticity, and when they break, it makes those things feel fleeting.

Rose knows, at least a little, and always is over if something needs fixing.

She can see her students from the window, lazing in the grass together. They had become a cohort in the last two years, growing up with one another. Petey holds her own with the older kids, and often bests them, much to their immense dismay, but now she is heading back inside, tired from a day spent rolling down hills and playing in the nearby streams.

Rey watches Petey as she plops down to play more peacefully on the floor, oblivious to her Aunt's presence. Rey quietly edges closer to the sometimes fickle girl, before Petey notices her, immediately recognizing Rey's game.

"Aunt Rey?"

"Yes Duckie?"

"Where Uncle Ben is?"

Rey sighs. With Petey, it's always Uncle Ben. When she was a baby, Rey gobbled up snuggles, but ever since Petey learned to crawl, she would crawl to Ben instead of her.

"With your dad. They're bringing food to people who need it really badly on Tatooine."

"Oh," and that's it, Petey turns back to her toys and resumes ignoring Rey.

"Is there something I can help you with?"

The little girl eyes her suspiciously, her impossibly large eyes narrowing for a moment, "That's okay, I want Uncle Ben."

"Ouch," Rey mimes as if she has been struck, and falls from the armrest of the couch theatrically to the floor, "straight to the heart, Petey."

"Aunt Rey! Aunt Rey! You okay?" Petey kneels over Rey's laying body as she goes limp in front of the little one.

Rey springs back to life, grabbing Petey as the little girl squeals at the sudden change, before Petey's squeal turns into laughter. Rey tucks her raven locks behind her tiny ear, "I'm okay, pretty girl."

"Hm." Petey contemplates Rey, "Maybe you can play?"

"What do you want to play?"

"We can do all the letters, we can pretend podracing. Or! " Petey thinks about it a little more before her eyes go wide, making Rey's eyes widen to mirror her, "I saw you and Uncle Ben from my window. You were playing with red fire sticks. Can I play, too?"

Rey's face falls, "You could see that?"

Petey's hands go to her face, trying to push her lips back into a smile, "Why you frowning Aunt Rey? Put your smile back on."

Rey mind runs, weaving through everything that could go wrong, should go wrong, will probably go wrong if they are seen by someone other than Petey training with _that_ saber.

It's been years since the trial, years since Ben had been ordered to destroy his old saber. Years since they stood on the cliffs of Mustafar, heat singeing their faces, his arm outstretched to drop it into the lava below. Years since she reached out to stop him, to tell him he didn't have to, shouldn't have to, destroy that part of him.

And now, this place, their home, had made them so comfortable and brazen they thought they could take it out again, just to train.

She swallows down the fear when she notices Petey's face still staring intently at her.

"I won't tell. Promise," Petey's voice is low, and more calm than Rey has ever heard it.

Rey's eyebrows knit at the now suddenly serious girl in front of her.

Petey pops up in the next instant and heads for the door, "Come on, Aunt Rey, let's catch lizards."

* * *

*Rey has her nose parked firmly in the belly of Poe's now long grounded X-Wing, breathing in the stale oil. Along with the _Falcon_ , it is the only tangible remnant of the war they all endured together, which forged them into family. The rest of it was ordered to be destroyed, burnt down into metal which, when sold, funded anti-hunger and education initiatives throughout the galaxy.

Poe couldn't part with his fighter jet, even though he would never fly it again. And Rey, being Rey, has always, always wanted to see under the hood, knowing that Poe must have made some modifications throughout the years. He would have had to, with how fast and low he could navigate it, how effortlessly his hairpin turns were.

And now is the perfect opportunity. Poe and Jessica had taken the _Falcon_ out for a trip after their wedding. They weren't due back for another two cycles, and their students were all back at their respective homes for break, so Rey had plenty of time to saunter nonchalantly to Poe's hangar on the far side of their shared compound to check it out.

So that is exactly what she does.

She is in the middle of trying to figure out the advantage of zip-tying the air filter to the exhaust when the air around her stops. The planet stops spinning.

The guttural wail she hears, it brings back everything, brings back her screaming for her parents to return, brings back Leia's pleas to have Ben back, it brings back her on the ground above Ben's dying body, covered in his blood.

Her legs are burning from running before she can think about anything else.

It's Rose.

Rey sees her from behind, on her knees next to the Great tree. She fights the urge to call out, knowing even if she did, Rose would never turn back.

Rey drops to her knees and skids to Rose, seeing only then what is in front of her.

Petey-her small body is contorted in odd angles on the ground. Her black curls fanned out, her little eyes glassy and unfocused, reflecting the branches of the tree above them.

"I thought she was still napping, I didn't know, I didn't see her," Rose hesitates on each word, unable to catch her breath.

Rey reaches out, "Rose it's..." okay? Is it?

It's then she sees it. The pool of blood rapidly growing under Petey's raven black hair, she had almost missed it, the blood being so, so dark. Why was it so dark?

Rose sees it too and starts to paw at Petey's body, covering the still child with her own stuttering movements. There is a howl, deep and dark, coming from Rose but Rey is going numb, her whole body slipping away from the scene.

This wasn't supposed to happen. All of this was behind them.

Petey's not moving, there are no shallow breaths, there is nothing but the ever growing pool of black.

Petey is their salvation, their path forward, their new hope. She symbolizes something that they need. She was born into a universe without war, because of the bravery of her parents and people like them all over the galaxy.

She is all that is good in their world put into a tiny package that they all could watch grow up, that they could raise together. She is the personification of their balance. All they had to do was look at Petey and know, that's how long things have been good, that's how long we've been whole.

And now she's laying on the ground, her little life fading from the universe and back into what it was before.

Rey can feel Finn and Ben running, can feel them approach, can feel when they see it, the shock reverberating so wildly it seeps down into her own bones but she can't move.

Finn's eyes are as wide as Rey as ever seen them as he cradles his wife, looking down at his daughter.

Rey hears Rose's voice as it presses into Finn's chest, "Why did I name her Paige? Why did I do that? Why did I put death on her when she was born?"

Rey catches Finn's eyes, still her first and her best friend, and sees the change in them already. The change from who he was, hopeful and caring and strong, to the shell of a man who had lost a child, who would never be the same after that moment.

She couldn't have that.

Whatever spell had overtaken her is broken as she looks at Finn fading from her too. She lets out her breath, tears falling with it, slowly reaching out to Finn, cradling his two loves, her hands meeting Petey's cool skin.

"Rose-can I see her? Please?"

She knows what she has to do.

Ben drops to his knees next to Rey, she turns towards him and shakes her head, silent sobs erupting from her open mouth.

She lays Petey's tiny body down on the ground in front of them, before splaying her hands out over the little girl. Ben knows right away what this is and he grabs her forearm.

Rey looks at him, and at first, she thinks he's going to tell her that she can't, that the last time sent her into a weeks long coma and that Petey is further gone than Ben was. But he doesn't, of course he doesn't, because this is Petey. Petey, who he rocks to sleep at night, making up fantastical stories to lull her into slumber. Petey, who he perches on his shoulders so they can pick the best, highest starfruits from the trees, and eat them all by themselves. Petey, who has never, ever been afraid of him. No, he would never try to stop her. Instead, he follows her arm to Petey's body, and places his large hands above hers. They focus, seeking out Petey's rapidly fading signature together.

Everything is light. She's in the plane, but she didn't mean to go there, just like before.

She sees Petey in the distance, walking away and screams out to her.

Petey turns around and laughs.

Everything goes white.*

* * *

Things come back to her slowly.

First, she becomes aware of the fact that she has a body again. She can feel the soft sheets beneath her arms and neck. She can feel him. Well, she can always feel him, but she can actually feel him, his hand in her own.

"Hey, welcome back," his voice is gruff and deep from exhaustion.

"Petey?" it's the first thing out of her, as she sits up, reaching for Ben's face.

"Petey's fine. Finn and Rose are with her now. Poe and Jessika just landed, they'll be here soon."

Rey's body swells with air and she grins, looking up and thanking everything.

"She's asking when she can play with you in the white room again."

Rey's grin turns into a full fledged smile and she runs her hand over her face, knowing what has to come next.

"That's going to be one hell of a conversation."

"Yeah, I'm glad you're the one who's going to tell them."

* * *

Petey's laughter carries from across the garden. Ben is carrying her on his back, pretending to be a tauntaun. Every once in a while, he mock bucks and dislodges her slightly, which only adds to her glee.

There is a scar, just above Petey's left ear, running back her skull. Rey knows she shouldn't have it, that the healing should have taken care of it, but something must have wanted her to keep it. A reminder.

Rey is too preoccupied with laughing at Petey and Ben's games to notice that Rose has come up, standing next to her and looking out at the players too.

"Kids are really good judges of character," Rose says, and Rey turns to her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And Petey, she loves her Uncle Ben, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"As much as I can hate him, for what he did, I can't deny that what he has done since, saving us, caring for your students, helping to save my daughter...there's so much hatred, and not enough forgiveness, and watching him and her, I think I'm ready."

Rey grabs Rose's hand and smiles, knowing the weight of that statement.

"He's really good with her, Rey. It's almost scary how good he is with her."

"I think he sees a lot of himself in her."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe we should sit down."

* * *

They start training Petey with the rest of their students on her third birthday, a little less than a month after her accident.

The next day, Rey starts bleeding again.

As she stares at her moon blood dotting her undergarments for the first time in six years, she feels a tear fall from her face, and then another.

Her mind races to Ben, to the Skywalkers, to Padme and Anakin, to those little children they had seen somewhere on that distant planet of ice, those little babies that would never be, could never be, that had been trapped there for the past six years.

As she weeps, the memory she had frozen of him, her son, their son, when the saber had sliced through her, starts to thaw, until he is something real again. Something real and solid and _possible._

She cries until Ben gets home, him rushing to her when he felt her panic and confusion. She cries as she tells him, shaking, until she's not crying anymore, until the shy smile on Ben's face becomes a shy smile on hers.

* * *

CW: I have offset the scene in question with asteriks (*), instead of a single line, so you know what to skip when reading. Within that scene, Finn and Rose's daughter, Petey, experiences a near death accident when she is very young. Rey and Ben work together to force heal her, which works, and also reveals that Petey is powerful in the force.

I did not only put in this scene for angst. It is an integral part of the story going forward that Rey and Ben experience this with Petey.

Also, Petey has existed solely on my computer for the last 8 months and I am so excited she now gets to exist elsewhere, too.

Thank you for reading. The angst is over! Part II will be out soon, where we get to see if I can do fluff.


End file.
